Bucs’ Todd Bowles, 59, graduates from college, fulfills mother’s dream
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Bucs head coach Todd Bowles on Saturday received his diploma and addressed the graduating class of 2023 at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
Bowles left Temple 37 years earlier to pursue an NFL career, playing for Washington and San Francisco before starting his coaching career. But he made a promise to his mother before she passed away in 2009 that he would return to college to get his degree.
Bowles made good on that promise, missing the final day of Bucs rookie minicamp to walk with his graduating class after receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in youth and community development.
“This is an amazing thing for me to be in a class with you,” Bowles told his fellow graduates. “I’m more nervous now than I ever was speaking in front of a locker room at halftime.
“Once I got out of college (at Temple), just going forward and I had a chance to play with the Redskins, I didn’t get my degree and my mother never said anything. She just went with it, and she let me go ahead and live my life. She passed in 2009, and the only thing she asked me was to make sure I got my degree. That stuck with me.
“Here I am at 59,” Bowles continued. “You’re never too old to stop learning. You stop learning, you get old when you stop learning. So I say to you, the Class of 2023, the future is yours. Take it. Grab it. Run with it. Be excited. Be excited. Every now and then, come back and thank your parents.”
Bowles began the process of completing his degree at the encouragement of his agent, Anthony Agnone, a Mount St. Mary’s graduate. Bowles enrolled in the university’s Center for Accelerated and Adult Education Program in 2020, just prior to the Bucs’ Super Bowl 55 championship season.
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