Vic Koenning and Brad Scott are two guys that know a lot of what former Clemson coach Tommy Bowden is going through right now. They have been there themselves.
That’s why the two of them are doing their best to offer up any support they can for a guy who took a chance with them, when most would not.
“This is really hurting my heart and it is a constant hurt, and I hope it goes away some day,”
Koenning said in regards to Bowden’s resignation as head coach Monday.
Scott, who coached at South Carolina and was fired a few weeks before Bowden was hired on at Clemson, was welcomed aboard by Bowden when it appeared he might be out of coaching for a while. Bowden hired Scott three days after being named Clemson’s head coach and along with current outside linebackers coach Ron West, remains as one of two from Bowden’s first staff at Clemson.
Koenning came to Clemson in 2005 after a two-year stint as a defensive coordinator at Troy. Coming to Clemson was a great opportunity for Koenning, who at the time thought he might not ever get an opportunity to coach at a BCS program after being fired as the head coach at Wyoming in 2002.
“I’m just telling you from someone that has been there, the last few weeks when I was a head coach I broke down every couple of days,”
he said. “Nobody knew about it. Tommy is going to have his days.”
Another member of the staff who is thankful to Bowden is new quarterbacks coach Billy Napier. The former Furman quarterback has repeatedly told anyone who will listen the last three years that he would not be in this position if it weren’t for Bowden.
“There isn’t a classier guy,”
Napier said.
Bowden took a chance with Napier when the young coach applied for a graduate assistant position in 2004. At the time, Napier had applied just about everywhere, but no one would return his calls. Then Bowden called and asked for him to come to his office so he could meet him. The next thing Napier knew, he was a part of the Clemson staff.
After leaving Clemson for a brief stint as quarterbacks coach at S.C. State, Napier was back at Clemson in 2006, when he joined Bowden’s staff full time. The last three years he has been Bowden’s tight ends coach, and last year, Bowden elevated him to recruiting coordinator where he helped land Bowden his highest-rated recruiting class in his 10 years at Clemson.
Now, like the rest of the Clemson staff, Napier is trying to move on the way Bowden taught him to. With a new position to teach, thanks also to the firing of offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Rob Spence, Napier is doing all he can to get the quarterbacks ready for Saturday’s games against Georgia Tech. He is doing it because he knows he owes it to him.
“It’s exciting to me. I’m not going to lie,”
he said. “I have always wanted to coach quarterbacks and that’s my intentions for the future anyway, but it just happened a little sooner than I thought. It’s a product of dire circumstances.“
“You try to flip the switch and look at it from (the players’) perspective and prepare them to play. You have to look at it from when you were coached and were a player. I have a pretty good understanding of Coach Spence and what he thought.”
Koenning says he is moving on too, but it’s only human nature that the thought and magnitude of what happened Monday goes through his mind occasionally; especially when he tries to takes a few minutes to himself.
“You have to start thinking about yourself a little bit when you are 48 years old and you have a family,”
he said. “There is a lot of anxiety, but that’s where your faith has to step in and help you.”
But when he puts on the whistle and heads out to the practice fields, Koenning says he turns those thoughts off and tries to focus in on why Bowden took a chance on him in the first place.
“There is no half gear, it is either go or don’t go,”
he said. “You want to do the right thing for Mike Hamlin, Chris Clemons, Chris Chancellor and those guys. The players you have here. That’s what you are doing it for.”
