MOBILE, Ala. – University of South Alabama assistant football coach Harland Bower sat down with USAJaguars.com to answer five questions entering his first season as a member of the Jaguar staff.

After earning four letters in football at Georgia Southern, where he was credited with a total of 56 stops on the defensive line, Bower received his bachelor's degree from the school in 2009.  He served one-year stints at Georgia Military College, Murray State, Rutgers and Troy before accepting his first full-time position at Central Arkansas in 2014.  After two seasons on the Bears' staff — where he worked for first-year Jaguar head coach Steve Campbell — Bower was a graduate assistant coach at Notre Dame the last two years, including helping the Fighting Irish end up 11th in the final national rankings this fall with a 10-3 mark following a victory over LSU in the Citrus Bowl.

1: What led to your decision to become a football coach?
HB: Honestly, I knew I wasn't going to have the opportunity to go play in the NFL and for me the love of the game was too high, I couldn't let it go.  My two options coming out of college were to go to the Marines or go into coaching.  I was pretty close to going into the Marine Corps, but coaching and football was just too special for me so I had to jump into it.

2: What is your coaching philosophy, and which mentor has played an influential role in your professional development?
HB: My overall coaching philosophy is — and I told this to the guys at our first meeting — that I want to be a transformational coach.  I think there are two types of coaches, transformational and transactional.  When you're looking at a big-picture philosophy and not getting into the X's and O's, I want to be a guy who is not just about football for these guys, it's about helping them change their lives for the better.  When we're recruiting young men, I want them to leave this program a better man than they came into it.  There are a lot of transactional coaches out there who are just worried about getting to 10 wins or winning the Sun Belt Conference, but for me it's about a lot more than that.  When I played for Brian Kelly at Central Michigan he was that way, and the assistant head coach at Notre Dame, Mike Elston — I just worked under him — played a huge role.  That was our deal, it was about the brotherhood and the family.  When you get guys to trust and believe in you all the wins and other stuff will come, but it is about building it.

3: What are your goals for the program and how do you go about accomplishing them?
HB: My goal for this program — as always, this comes from the top and Coach Campbell — is about graduating all of our student-athletes.  Our mission is to graduate all of our players and to win championships, and championships at this school starts with winning the Sun Belt Conference and then winning bowl championships. We go about accomplishing that by jumping in the pit and going to work, all those clichés about putting your hard hat on and grabbing your lunch pail and going to work; that's what we're doing this week getting with our guys and jumping in.

4: If you were not a football coach you would be a ___, and why?
HB: I definitely would've been a Marine.  I've always admired our men and women who serve our country, just talking about it now gives me the chills; it is something that is extremely special to me.  It wasn't because I had a bunch of family members who were in, but looking at it that was something I wanted to do.  If I wasn't coaching I would definitely be in the Armed Forces.

5: What is the most interesting personal fact about you that can't be found in your bio?
HB: I was probably a better baseball player than a football player, in high school I was recruited heavily to play baseball.  I broke my leg my sophomore year and that took me out of catching, and I was a catcher who was a really good hitter.

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