Follow EDMONTON ELKS

© 2024 Edmonton Elks. All rights reserved.

Features April 12, 2022

Bowden Brings Baseball Background, 2015 memories to EE

There’s a lore about Opening Day in baseball. Spring is in the air; the dark of winter has passed and anticipation is just beginning for summer. Opening Day represents rebirth and offers hope. As the saying goes, everyone is in first place on Opening Day. It’s an irresistible sentiment, one that Merritt Bowden still feels.

“That will never leave me,” says Bowden, a former minor league baseball player, scout and manager.

Opening Day’s sense of new beginning resonates particularly this year with Bowden, who is about to begin his first season as special teams coordinator of the Edmonton Elks.

Bowden was announced as the latest addition to head coach Chris Jones’ staff on March 31, along with the hirings of Mike Scheper as special teams assistant and Michael Daniels as chief of staff. The Alabama native is back in Edmonton several years after a stint as visiting coach in 2015 when Jones guided the Green and Gold to their most recent Grey Cup triumph.

“In 2015 when I was in camp with those guys as a guest coach, when I left at the end of that three-week period, I knew there was something special about that team,” Bowden says. “There was something special about that locker room and I knew what kind of season they were about to have.

“When you leave an environment like that, you search for that locker room, you search for that type of environment as a coach and a player that pushes everybody to the next level,” Bowden continues. “So when this opportunity came along, I’m thinking I remember that feeling, I remember what it was like, and we have to do our very best to get back to that same type of that locker room, that same feeling that I had when I was there, that special feeling that only championship teams will have.”

WEALTH OF COACHING EXPERIENCE 

The onetime centre fielder has carved out a successful career on the sidelines of the gridiron. His CFL coaching experience includes three seasons with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in multiple roles, including special teams assistant coach, linebackers coach and defensive line coach. The last couple years, Bowden has worked as defensive and special teams assistant coach with the Toronto Argonauts.

He’s also coached at the highest levels of U.S. college and high school football. Bowden was a graduate assistant coach at Auburn University in 2004-05 when the Tigers completed an unbeaten season by winning the Southeastern Conference championship and the Sugar Bowl. He was also defensive backs coach for Hoover high school’s back-to-back Alabama state championship-winning teams in 2013 and 2014.

His football resume speaks for itself but doesn’t answer the question of how exactly he went from playing America’s Pastime to coaching Canadian football. Indeed, Bowden has taken a long and winding road, not unlike those traveled on long rides from one minor league baseball outpost to the next during the dog days of summer.

BASEBALL BEGINNINGS

Bowden played collegiate baseball from 1988 to 1991 at Jacksonville State University, where he was a two-time All-Gulf South Conference selection and named a First Team All-American in 1990 when he led the nation with 25 doubles in 50 games. The Gamecocks went to the Division II College World Series in all four of Bowden’s seasons and won the NCAA national championships in 1990 and 1991.

After finishing his career at Jacksonville State as the program’s all-time leader in hits, doubles, and stolen bases, he signed with the Minnesota Twins organization. Bowden made his pro debut in 1991 with the Twins’ Appalachian League (rookie class) affiliate in Elizabethton, Tenn.

From 1993 to 1997, he worked as an associate scout with the Atlanta Braves and was scouting for the organization when the Braves won the World Series in 1995.

A decade from when he last played, Bowden made a comeback in 2001, hitting .312 for the Montgomery Wings in the independent All-American Association. The following season he served as player-manager of the independent Selma Cloverleafs and was named the 2002 Southeastern League’s manager of the year.

He played on outfields laden in divots, rode on buses with upholstery older than he was, stayed in rundown motor inns on the side of the highway, and made next to nothing. And it was one of the best jobs he ever had.

“You had to love it because you play every night,” Bowden says. “Most of those guys that are at that level love the game and I always loved the game, but it is a grind. It has to be in your blood if that’s what you’re going to do because the years of trying to make it through the minor leagues is tough.

“It’s not glamorous, but it is fun and it’s an opportunity, which is the most important thing,” Bowden continues. “I think we can probably look at that through most of our lives. We don’t think about the money, but the opportunities are the most important thing because a lot of people don’t get those.”

Before long, opportunity knocked. Only it wasn’t wearing a glove and a ball cap — it had on a helmet and shoulder pads.

FOOTBALL OPENS ITS DOORS 

Bowden was no stranger to the gridiron. He’d grown up playing quarterback and was asked to join Jacksonville State’s football team but opted to focus exclusively on baseball. Since finishing college, he’d spent several years coaching high school football.

Now he had the chance to be part of support staff for an SEC powerhouse at Auburn, led by head coach Tommy Tuberville, who virtually swept college football’s coach of the year awards in 2004.

“I was able to break into college football and start learning the game at a higher level,” says Bowden, who assisted with all aspects of the defense and special teams for the Tigers. “I just fell in love with coaching football, so that’s my journey of how I got back into football and was really the start of my journey that brought me to Edmonton.”

COMING TO CANADA 

Bowden was a guest coach with Double E during the team’s 2015 training camp in Spruce Grove.

Bowden continued coaching high school in Alabama, filling numerous roles from special teams coach to defensive coordinator to head coach. Eventually he found his way North of the Border.

“I knew nothing about the CFL when I came in,” says Bowden. “I was there only for about three weeks as a guest coach (with the Green and Gold in 2015), and I fell in love with the game.

“I’ve always been heavily involved with special teams every where I’ve been, it’s a part of the game that I love, and if you’re a coach and passionate about special teams like I am, there’s no greater league anywhere than the CFL,” he adds. “The excitement, the game-changing plays. I just fell in love with it.”

“I was there only for about three weeks as a guest coach, and I fell in love with the game.”

If Bowden had goosebumps on the first day of the new Major League Baseball season last week, just imagine the chills he’ll get during the CFL’s Opening Week, when Edmonton visits the B.C. Lions on June 11. Or the electricity he’ll feel when the Elks charge out onto The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium for their home-opener against the Saskatchewan Roughriders on June 18.

“The potential for this team, I can see a vey high ceiling, because I know how we’re going to do things,” he says. “Everybody has good players, but it’s what you create off the field that is the most important.

“You’re never going to win the big one on talent alone because you’re always going to run in to someone who’s just as talented as you are,” Bowden continues. “It comes down to all the other intangibles that are revealed in championship teams, and I think we’ll create a culture for winning and a sense of love throughout that locker room that will allow us to have a lot of success.

“I feel strongly about that. I feel strongly about this group.”

Be there when the Elks kickoff at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium this season. Season tickets are available now.