How Many Chances Do you Get? The Bowdens and Black Athletes

Bobby and Terry Bowden

One of the worst human beings in America is Bobby Bowden. His toleration of Black criminality in the pursuit of football glory at Florida State - and his recruiting of primarily Black athletes whose academic ability wouldn't qualify them for entrance into a fourth grade spelling bee - has seeped into virtually every program in America.

Infamously, 36 players - almost all Black - were unable to play a Music City Bowl game against Kentucky for cheating in the classroom, though most of these players were considered remedial students begging the question of exactly what type of cheating they were doing?

Not staying in the lines during coloring class?

Bowden's most famous pupil, former offensive coordinator at Florida State and current head coach at the University of Georgia Mark Richt, has a recruiting strategy that is directly out of the Bobby's playbook. Recruit nothing but Black thugs to UGA, a school with precious few non-athlete Black males on campus, and then watch as they compete with other Southeastern Conference (SEC) schools to see which team can have the most Black players arrested.

Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia are always vying for this award.

We'll deal with Bowden at length in the upcoming Opiate of America: College Football in Black and White, but want to draw attention to a story that deals with his son, Terry, and one of the "second-chance" Black athletes who ended up at the school he coached at because they couldn't abide by the rules at the former institution that attempted to educate them:

Under coach Terry Bowden, North Alabama has become a Division-II hotbed for transfer players seeking another chance after circumstances led them away from a Division-I school. Bucs receiver Preston Parker turned his playing career around at North Alabama after Terry’s father, Bobby, dismissed Parker from Florida State. In 2011, cornerback Janoris Jenkins and defensive end James Brooks played their final years of eligibility for Bowden after leaving Florida and Arizona State, respectively.

Bowden does intense background checks on individuals before accepting them on the Lions. He did the same on Jenkins, a projected high pick in the 2012 NFL draft.

“I tried to figure out as much of his background as possible to find out if he was just a kid who made mistakes or if he was not a good risk,” Bowden explained, per the Akron Beacon Journal. “… He really had three strikes at Florida. You have to understand how many guys I don’t take who get in similar types of trouble.”

While Bowden insists University of Florida officials “assured me he was worth the risk,” Jenkins apparently left out one detail. He never told Bowden about his four children, all under the age of four and allegedly by three different women.

This is the red flag on Jenkins’ past that may scare off the most NFL teams.

“He has a girlfriend; I’ve had to call him at her house plenty of times,” Bowden said. “He never told me any of that stuff.”

Bowden sounds willing to vouch for Jenkins when NFL teams call, but Jenkins’ secretiveness about this one issue begs the question of whether he’s been fully revealing during Senior Bowl and Scouting Combine interviews. Jenkins already has baggage that will likely eliminate him from several draft boards. He can’t afford much more.

In what vocation - outside of football - would Jenkins possibly earn enough income to take care of his brood? Think how many Black people don't become professional athletes, and you begin to understand why so many Black people are reliant on welfare, EBT/Food Stamps and Section 8 Housing, not to mention free lunches at school for their kids.

How many of the Black athletes playing college football or college basketball actually academically belong at the university they are attending? We are no longer a serious nation.

In the book Winning's Only Part of the Game: Lessons of Life and Football (a running dialogue between Terry and Bobby) Bobby Bowden let's slip this pearl of wisdom, which cuts the heart of the concept of Black-Run America (BRA). On p. 136, we read:

There are going to be differences in the way white people and black people see things. If you are white and your coaching at the top levels of college football or college basketball, your going to find yourself standing in the middle of a locker-room where your the minority. How can you not be sensitive to what black players are thinking?

What are these Black players thinking? Well, they need to realize that without sports, they wouldn't be anywhere near a college campus unless it was working in the custodial services. Unlike Good Will Hunting, it's hard to even conceive these "student-athletes" doing simple arithmetic, let alone trigonometry.

So when you see one or two white players on a major college football team this upcoming season, know that it was Bobby Bowden you influenced the recruiting patterns of scores of coaches. His son didn't fall too far from the tree.

Chances are, once Jenkins NFL career ends, he'll be just like former star Terrell Owens: