Jimbo Fisher highlights relationship with Bowden family, his personal transfer experience

College football coaching trees are fascinating and few have a more interesting path to a high profile college football job than Jimbo Fisher, a protege of the Bowden family.

Fisher walked through his journey as a high school recruit to Clemson, then Salem, then Samford on Wednesday during an SEC teleconference call.

“I was out of high school and I was getting recruited in all three sports, football, basketball and baseball out of high school,” Fisher explained. “And had some options to go. (Terry Bowden) had come in and wanted me to play quarterback. Lot of guys wanted me to play secondary, defensive back in college, some quarterback because I was at that time 5-9, a little bit shorter.

“But I also loved baseball. I really loved baseball and played a lot of baseball. I actually ended up turning him down originally and going to play baseball on scholarship at Clemson, middle infielder. Left and, which I always said I shouldn’t have, I felt good there. It ended up working out.”

When Fisher ended up walking away from baseball and turning to football, he went with the Bowden family and the guy who wanted him as a quarterback: Terry Bowden.

“Was very glad that I ended up getting back with him when I transferred back and played quarterback for him,” Fisher said. “Won the conference in ’84, my freshman year I was the quarterback for him. We won the conference and he had a bunch of transfers in. Very much like today in the portal, I understand what it was like.

“Then the next year we won the conference and he left and went to Akron for a year, and then he got me to transfer. We talked and I went back and played for him as a senior at Samford and we had another tremendous year. We had great offenses, led the country in offense every year, and he was a great coach.”

While at Samford, Fisher set multiple records and was named the Division III National Player of the Year.

More importantly, he made some connections with the Bowden family that would propel him through the coaching ranks later in life as he sank his teeth into coaching. Fisher is forever grateful.

“Taught me a lot about football and then the connections, his family really opened a lot of doors for me and gave me a lot of opportunities and treated me just like one of their own,” Fisher said. “I’ve always had great gratitude to him, his father, his brothers. Still very close to all of them and was with his dad, too. It was a tremendous group.”