Best Bobby Bowden Quotes

#1. Son, you've got a good engine, but your hands aren't on the steering wheel.

Bobby Bowden

#2. After you retire, there's only one big event left ... and I ain't ready for that.

Bobby Bowden

#3. There's only about 6 inches that turns that halo into a noose.

Bobby Bowden

#4. When I go after something, I go after it hard. It has always been that way. I don't know. It's in my blood.

Bobby Bowden

#5. A guy's who has all the money he needs and never faced any hard times, he won't have any character. But when you've had it tough and you've had it rough and you thought you were at the end of the rope and you work your way out of it, that's the way you build character.

Bobby Bowden

#6. You can live by biblical principles, and you can teach by those principles and still be a winner. So many coaches think you've got to kick your players in the rear end. You've got to cuss them out. You've got to hit them across the head. No. You don't have to do that.

Bobby Bowden

#7. I'm not too proud to change. I like to win too much.

Bobby Bowden

#8. I learned a long time ago that you don't have to go around using bad language and trying to hurt people to show how macho you are. That stuff won't get you anywhere, it just shows lack of vocabulary and character.

Bobby Bowden

#9. Football has always been a big part of my life. Almost from the day I was born, playing and coaching football were all I really ever wanted to do.

Bobby Bowden

#10. He died right after he retired, and seeing that made me feel more conscious of a man needing a motive to live. If I ever got out of coaching, I would have to get a job somewhere, or I'm afraid I'd wilt on the vine, too.

Bobby Bowden

#11. I suppose I'm like most coaches now, standing on the sideline hoping somebody asks them a question.

Bobby Bowden

#12. The thing that drives most coaches out of coaching in college is they get tired of the grind of recruiting.

Bobby Bowden

#13. Tom Osborne, Lou Holtz, Bobby Bowden were in our living room. My mom didn't know who they were!

Hines Ward

#14. I guess I'll retire someday if I live that long.

Bobby Bowden

#15. Integrity makes my job easier. It's deception and dishonesty that requires so much diligent effort.

Bobby Bowden

#16. If somebody mistreats you, treat 'em good. That kills 'em.

Bobby Bowden

#17. I've always said it takes more courage to stand back there and throw a ball knowing you're fixing to get drilled than anything I can think of in football.

Bobby Bowden

#18. Don't go to the grave with life unused.

Bobby Bowden

#19. The greatest mistake is to continue to practice a mistake.

Bobby Bowden

#20. All my life, I've been right next to a football field. I never knew nothing else.

Bobby Bowden

#21. To have the kind of year you want to have, something has to happen that you can't explain why it happened. Something has to happen that you can't coach.

Bobby Bowden

#22. Discipline to me is sacrifice; it's willingness to give up something you want to do, so you can better yourself.

Bobby Bowden

#23. That boy don't know the meaning of the word fear. In fact, I just saw his grades, and that boy don't know the meaning of a lot of words.

Bobby Bowden

#24. I am not happy with moral victories. Those things are forgotten.

Bobby Bowden

#25. There's a saying in my business that there are two kinds of coaches - those who have been fired and those who haven't been fired yet. That's kind of like prostate cancer. Every man will have it if he lives long enough.

Bobby Bowden

#26. He who gets the best players usually wins.

Bobby Bowden

#27. If their IQ's where five points lower they'd be geraniums.

Bobby Bowden

#28. Sportsmanship to me is going out and playing as hard as you can within the rules.

Bobby Bowden

#29. I won't miss coaching. What you miss is that camaraderie with those boys and the other coaches. You miss that.

Bobby Bowden

#30. Courage is doing something you need to do that might get you hurt.

Bobby Bowden

#31. I'm praying for a misdemeanor

Bobby Bowden

#32. People that are brilliant and successful, we think they've just always been that way. That's not the case. Most of them have had some tough adversity in their life. It's prepared them. I've never felt like you could develop character without adversity.

Bobby Bowden