After 100th career win, football coach Bob Owens looks back on his career

Bob Owens, Chapman’s head football coach, reflected on finding success and team camaraderie alongside fellow football coaches and players after his 100th career win. Photo courtesy of Bob Owens

When Louisiana-raised Bob Owens first became head coach of Chapman football in 2006, he knew there was a hefty workload ahead of him in order to build up the program. But, from the beginning, Owens and Chapman staff had a plan in place. 

Fast forward to now, and Owens has been able to see Chapman’s vision of the football program become a reality under his guidance. 

Owens told The Panther his aspirations of coaching trace back to his time playing football at his alma mater, the University of La Verne under the leadership of former head coach Roland Ortmayer.

Over his career, Owens has gone 100-93 and earned recognition as the second Black coach to amass 100 wins in Division III football history. He told The Panther he attributes his success to the people he worked alongside with. 

“If I get to take [a piece of paper] and tear it up into 100 small bits of success for 100 games, then I’d give (every player and staff member) a piece of it, because they all have earned it,” Owens said. “It’s really been a shared venture on the part of our coaching staff and on the part of our players — their commitment to success and winning. I just happen to be the head coach.”

In 2019, Owens saw his most successful season, going 10-1 and reaching the second round of the DIII playoffs. Owens spoke about the accomplishment of beating a formidable DIII football school, Linfield University, in the playoffs.

“We had not beaten a Linfield team, and Linfield is one of the more successful football programs in all of DIII over a historical period of maybe about 12 to 14 years,” Owens said. “We beat them in triple overtime, and it was awesome.”

Before applying to Chapman football in 2006, Owens was the offensive coordinator at Humboldt State University. After discovering from David Bishop, the school’s current assistant head coach and defensive coordinator, that there was a vacancy in the head coaching position, Owens called then athletic director Dave Curry.

Curry already had a close relationship with Owens from coaching in the same conference and suggested that Owens apply for the position. It wasn’t until the second request that Owens decided to apply. 

“[I said] ‘if I come in and give you guys an impression that I can do the job, then you will meet with the president and support me’. He said, ‘Okay, you interview well, and I’ll do the rest.’”

Over the course of his 14-year-long coaching career at Chapman, Owens says he has experienced a lot of growth. When he first began, the athletics field and department building was not fully operational. Owens, however, did not let these initial setbacks get in the way of his goal to strengthen the football program.

“Often I look at this (note in my office), and it is from ex-Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz — it says, ‘Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% of how you respond to it,’” Owens said. “So much of our success is just our attitude. So, even though everything wasn’t here, we knew it was coming, and we knew at the end of the day we would have an awesome facility.”

In addition to getting the resources and funding to build up the football program, Owens also explained that getting players to believe Chapman’s football team is capable of success took some time to develop.

“We faced a team of guys that had to buy into the vision of what we thought this program would look like and could be like,” Owens said. “Today, we have guys that believe that — we have guys (now) that, when we talk about what the next 10 years of Chapman football is going to be like, they're like, ‘Yeah I can see that.’ When we talked about that when I came in 2006, half of the team was like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

Seeing the growth of the program in terms of its impact on players, however, is what stood out to Owens the most in his time so far at Chapman.

“The people that are going to tell the story of this program are the players,” Owens said. “And what the players will have created and will remember the most will be the accomplishments, the achievements and the mountains they climbed over the course of the four years they were here..”

Coming into the season as one of the best DIII football teams in the country, expectations will be great for the team to succeed. For Owens, winning the conference is one of his goals, but he is most focused on taking a careful approach to the season.

“I tell our guys all the time (that) every team in our conference can beat us, and on any given day, any football team in America can beat the other one,” Owens said. “The teams that win are the ones that are best prepared for that moment … We’ve got to prepare for every opponent and unique circumstance. We can’t get ahead of ourselves.”

Overall, what Owens loves about the Chapman football program is the community and strong connection between the  players and the coaching staff. 

“The excitement for me here is our players; I absolutely love (them),” Owens said. “Our players love and respect our coaching staff and vice versa. It’s the best of both worlds for me, in terms of having a group of coaches that really understand the game, but love the players, and a group of players that just think they’re in the best place in America. So, they couldn’t be in a better place than with us here at Chapman.”