Andy Lyons / Getty Images file

Terry Bowden won his first 20 games at Auburn in 1993-94.

Jeff Bowden, a UNA assistant and former Florida State offensive coordinator, said his older brother frequently sends text messages at 4 a.m. to staffers.

“What scares me about Terry, I never thought the batteries could get more charged than they are,” Jeff Bowden said. “I’ve never seen a coach like him that just went after everything, there was nothing he couldn’t do.

“Now magnify that by five. He’s so hungry. It’s like 10 years off, those batteries are supercharged. He’s just working at a pace that’s tough to be around because it’s tough to hang with.”

He calls Terry “the best football coach in our family, with the exception of maybe Dad.” Brother Tommy is a former head coach at Clemson and Tulane.

Bowden has his 1993 Bear Bryant national coach of the year award prominently on the desk in his outer office, with two UNA purple and gold ties wrapped around it.

He was the first Division I coach in more than five decades to reach 100 wins before his 40th birthday. And Bowden, perhaps the coaching family’s biggest Type A personality, was already calculating how many wins he’d need to average to pass Bryant’s record for major college wins since eclipsed by both his father and Penn State’s Joe Paterno.

Quick turnarounds at Salem College, Samford and Auburn hardly prepared him to cope with major setbacks.

“I think I set myself up to be devastated when something came in that was too big for me to handle,” Bowden said. “Of all us, I was the personality that would hurt the most. I was the 5-5 guy that was proving something every minute.”

Bowden said he isn’t necessarily looking at North Alabama as a launching pad back into a more high-profile gig or taking success for granted.

“I’m realistic enough to know they have fired coaches here for not winning,” he said. “And if I win a lot, somebody might come along and offer me money that I’ll really have a hard time turning down. But I’m not here to move on. I’ve been to Division I.”

Plus he added: “I’m 53, and a man at 53 sees life and objectives and satisfactions a little different than a guy of 36.”

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