Alan Bowman Staying Positive Despite Rollercoaster Season

WACO, Texas — The past month of so has been quite the rollercoaster for Alan Bowman the football player, but Alan Bowman the human is trying to keep things in perspective.

Bowman quarterbacked Oklahoma State’s 38-28 loss to Baylor on Saturday afternoon. It was the Cowboys’ fifth straight defeat, a stretch that that has seen Bowman benched three times. He lost his starting spot to Garret Rangel ahead of OSU’s trip to BYU last week, but Rangel broke his collarbone early in that game, forcing Bowman to get back on the emotional rollercoaster and play for the Cowboys again. Then he was back to starting Saturday in Waco.

“Kind of like, ‘Screw it. Who cares?'” said Bowman of his mindset traversing the past few weeks. “Ups and downs, not played well, played well, thrown for a lot of yards, turnovers. At this point now it’s, you know what, let’s go out there and throw it around the yard and have some fun. I think that’s when I’m at my best. …

“You know what, let’s go out there and sling it around the yard because that’s all I know how to do.”

Bowman played alright against the Bears. Not great, but not as poorly as some of his games earlier in this tough stretch for the Cowboys. He threw for 359 yards, a touchdown and an interception against Baylor, completing 67% of his passes. It as his highest completion percentage since the Cowboys blowout win against Tulsa on Sept. 14.

Against the Golden Hurricane that day, Bowman completed 77% of his passes for 396 yards and five touchdowns. The performance was enough to earn him Walter Camp Offensive Player of the Week honors. The Cowboys were 3-0 at that point with a big game against Utah on the horizon that, at the time, was thought to be massive in the Big 12 title race. But after an early ascension, the rollercoaster started going down.

In the three-game stretch of Utah, Kansas State and West Virginia, Bowman completed 51% of his passes for 686 yards, four touchdowns and six interceptions. He was benched against Utah and West Virginia, leading to Rangel taking over starting duties in Provo.

After he relieved the injured Rangel against BYU, Bowman played well enough. He led OSU on a fourth-quarter, go-ahead touchdown drive that took more than eight minutes off the clock, but the Cowboy defense promptly gave the lead up.

Bowman has seen a lot in his seven years as a college quarterback. A hot start to his career in Lubbock before a string of peculiar injuries and a revolving door of quarterbacks. He sat nearly two entire seasons at Michigan. His Cowboy career started in a three-quarterback rotation and a 2-2 start with an embarrassing loss to South Alabama. But then Bowman was handed the keys to the offense coming out of that three-QB weave, and he went on to lead the Pokes to a 10-4 record and an appearance in the Big 12 title game.

That all is a lot on its own, but then add that he’s spent time this season getting booed by his home fans and being trashed on social media. But when he met with the media after Saturday’s game — just as he did in the week following Utah when he first got pulled — Bowman took the high road. He handled himself with positivity. He looked at the bright side.

“There’s a lot of struggle that I’ve been through in my college career and yeah, I just kind of look back and say, ‘You know what, I got a beautiful fiancée, I got a home, I got a beautiful family and football isn’t everything in my life.’ And I think you get a lot of hate from guys around social media and things like that, but at the end of the day, I get to go home to two beautiful dogs, a beautiful fiancée — I’m going to get married — so I got a great family. I don’t know what I’m going to do; hopefully I have a lot of opportunities. So I feel like you kinda get into lulls mentally — I definitely have earlier in my career when football isn’t going well.

“But you know, as you guys, as anybody, they have a life other than their job. And my job right now is to be the quarterback at Oklahoma State, but when I go home to my fiancée and two dogs, I am Alan and that’s all that matters to them and even my teammates. So I think that’s just kinda one of many lessons I’ve learned in seven years of college football, and hopefully everybody can just take is, you know what, you’re going to go through a lot of shit. I’m going to be honest with you; you’re gonna go through a lot of shit. And if you can just say, ‘You know what? I’m grateful for what I have,’ and move on — at the end of the day, it’s just a game. We all would die for the game, but it’s just a game.”