Congrats on earning your degree, coach Bowles! 🎓
— Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@Buccaneers) September 6, 2022
Even while he was teaching schemes and techniques to his Tampa Bay Buccaneers defenders, Todd Bowles was back in the classroom as a student himself.
Now the Bucs’ head coach, Bowles has kept a promise to his mother from years ago: To go back and finish his college degree.
Bowles has done just that, completing a Bachelor of Science in youth and community development at Mount St. Mary’s.
Speaking to the media Wednesday, Bowles talked about the challenges of going to school while coaching in the NFL, as well as the importance of education, and the example he wants to set for others.
“It’s tough, it’s tough,” Bowles said of getting his schoolwork done alongside his coaching responsibilities. “I get to work early, do some work early, listen to some podcasts early, do some online stuff early, then do a little bit late and you make the best of it.”
“As a coach, I don’t think I can use it very much,” Bowles said of his new degree. “As a father, it’s a good time to get it because I have a sophomore at Rutgers, and I have one that’s a senior now and one that’s in sixth grade. So, just getting that hopefully helps them get theirs and they can do something with it. For me, it was a personal thing as far as a promise I made to my mother before she passed that I would go back and get it. Sometimes life gets in the way and things come up and you finally put your foot down and you try and do it. So, it’s something that I just did.”
“I think you need to get [a degree] early as possible so you can do something with it – but at the same time, for the people that go back and get it, it’s a sense of personal accomplishment and hopefully it gives someone hope that it’s never too late,” Bowles said. “You’d rather get it earlier than later, but better to get it when you can.”
Bowles is expected to take part in Mount St. Mary’s commencement ceremony in May of 2023.