Congrats, Coaches: Bowes, Kelly Make Headlines

What a week for the University of New Hampshire football program and for a couple of former Wildcat coaches in particular.

First came news that Bill Bowes, head coach of the Wildcats for 27 seasons from 1972 to 1998 had been selected to the 2016 College Football Hall of Fame class.

Bowes becomes the first Wildcat to receive the honors handed out by the National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame and will be one of the featured guests at the organization's annual gala early next December at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

Then word broke that Chip Kelly – who has gone to great heights after being groomed under Bowes – is going to be the new head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. Kelly, who lost his first NFL job with the Philadelphia Eagles barely two weeks earlier, was not down long.

UNH head coach Sean McDonnell, who followed Bowes as head coach of the Wildcats and is linked tightly to both coaches, was ecstatic about the string of good news, starting with the honors for his mentor.

"I couldn't be happier for somebody, more proud of a guy who deserves it, a guy who I think epitomizes not only doing the right things with a program, but with changing kids' lives and changing young men's lives," McDonnell said. "A lot of people didn't realize when they were playing for him at times, how he was really forming who these men were going to be. He was a helluva coach. More innovative than people ever thought of being and his consistency is what jumped out at me the whole time."

Bowes collected 21 winning seasons during his time in Durham with a career mark of 175-106-5.

McDonnell was equally excited to see Kelly quickly get a second shot in the NFL after putting up 10-6 records his first two seasons and then being let go with one game left this season and his team at 6-9.

"It's awesome, just awesome," McDonnell said. "Again, it's deserving. How do you do what he did in his first three years as a head coach and get fired? Cooler heads prevailed. People, knowledgeable people, saw what he did."

It's time to move on.

"Whatever happened in Philly, that's fine," McDonnell said. "What's going to happen in San Fran is what happened in Oregon, what happened in New Hampshire, what happened in Philly. There's going to be a change in the culture. It's going to be exciting, it's going to be fast-paced. He's going to do it because he's a smart coach and I think that's what people in San Francisco realized."

Bowes, McDonnell and Kelly go back decades in Durham.

McDonnell played for Bowes and they are UNH's only two head coaches over the last 43 years.

Kelly was a UNH defensive back out of Manchester Central from 1981-84 with designs on being a coach.

He worked as an assistant at Columbia, UNH, John Hopkins when he returned to Durham to coach running backs.

A few years later, offensive line coach Jackie Bicknell left, opening that position.

"The big thing with Chip was, he was always a student of the game," Bowes said this week. He made an appointment and came in and shut the door and said, 'I want to apply for the offensive line job. I want to expand my knowledge of the game.'"

Kelly studied and studied some more and kept expanding that knowledge.

When Bowes retired following the 1998 season, McDonnell stepped up from being offensive coordinator to the top job and Kelly became OC.

In 2004, the Wildcats started a run of playoff success that hit 12 straight tournament appearances last fall.

Kelly left after the 2006 season to be the offensive coordinator at Oregon and two years later was the head coach of the Ducks.

"You could tell if anyone was going to do it, it was going to be him," Bowes said. "He put in the time. He's a football coach. That's what he always wanted to do."

It was rough at the end in Philadelphia for Kelly, but McDonnell figures things might not have been as rough as they appeared in some quarters. Either way, he said, Kelly will adjust.

"I think Chip's going to learn from every situation he's ever been in, he always has," McDonnell said. "I think what Chip will do, as any guy that's as smart as he is, he'll figure out what he did really, really well and improve in that and he'll find out what didn't work and learn from it and correct it. He'll get people in the right places at the right time and hire the right guys and it will go."

Meanwhile, he and Kelly and a host of other coaches owe much to a guy who is now a Hall of Famer, McDonnell said.

"You talk to Chip, you talk to Mark Whipple, you talk to Phil Estes, you talk to Paul Gorham, you talk to Gary Crowton, the thing they remember about coach is about how good he was at what he did, in detailing toughness, detailing character and realizing athletic ability in kids and seeing not only where they would be as a freshman or sophomore but where they would be as a junior or senior," McDonnell said. "He taught me a lot of life lessons. . . . I'm very proud to say I've followed in his footsteps here at UNH."

As for Bowes, he received news of his Hall of Fame selection in a somewhat roundabout manner.

He works a shift into the night at Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester and when he got home late last Thursday night a package had come for him. His wife left it out for him and he moved it aside and didn't open it until 6 the next morning.

"There was a football with my name on it and National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame," said Bowes, who knew he had been nominated for the Hall a while before. "It was a total surprise. I didn't think I stood a snowball's chance with the competition that was out there. I was shocked."

McDonnell was not.

Allen Lessels
@UNHInsider
Allen.Lessels@unh.edu

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