Terry Bowden, Akron, and the Plight of the Mid-Major College Football
Terry Bowden, Akron, and the plight of the mid-major college footb... http://www.grantland.com/print?id=7834061 Grantland April 20, 2012 12:00 AM ET What, Exactly, Is Akron Up To? By Michael Weinreb On Terry Bowden’s desk, lost amid two unopened bottles of Diet Mountain Dew, a jar of antacids, and a precarious stack of legal pads, is a book called The Greatest Salesman in the World. I have no idea if Bowden has read it multiple times or if someone sent it to him on a lark; at one point, I begin to broach the subject, but Bowden has a genial way of filibustering that makes it easy to lose the thread of the conversation. Given the task he faces, the book’s presence is so overt that it’s probably better left unaddressed. It is April in Akron, Ohio, which means, as it does at college campuses across America, that the peculiar ritual of spring football is nearing its culmination. As far as I can tell, there is no real purpose for spring football other than to traffic in blind optimism about the season to come, and nowhere has blind optimism been in shorter supply than in Akron, where the hometown college football team — reflecting the ongoing struggles of its city since the rubber industry imploded — has foundered about for decades in search of an identity. This, Bowden knows, is the primary reason why he’s been hired; his name, passed down by a father who won more games than any major-college coach other than Joe Paterno,1 brings a cachet that his predecessors did not have.
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