“You wanna hear a funny story?”
Terry Bowden is on the phone with reporters from Oklahoma, presumably to discuss the Sept. 5 football game between the Sooners and his Akron Zips. He has let it slip, though, that in September 1978 he found himself on Owen Field as a Rudyesque running back for West Virginia.
“The greatest part of that game was when they got their five-touchdown lead, I got in,” Bowden said. “That was the key point of the game where I got in. I’m 5-foot-5 ˝ and 170 pounds. I knew I was gonna be a coach a long time ago.
“You know how good y’all were in ’78. Dadgum, those poor two horses got so tired running around that field. I thought they were gonna have a heart attack running around that field so many times.”
That’s a jewel of a soundbite on its own, but here’s the really funny part:
“The last play of the game, I was in with all the scrubs and we were down pretty bad,” Bowden said. “Our quarterback scrambled and I leaked out of the backfield. He was gonna throw it to me, and I was actually gonna have a reception and a statistic. And the offensive lineman turned around at the last minute, he thought it was coming to him, and he intercepted my pass and we got a penalty. My own offensive lineman intercepted my pass and I didn’t get my one statistic against Oklahoma.”
