Kansas defensive coordinator Clint Bowen gets the attention of his players during the second quarter on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2013 at Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham, North Carolina.

Clint, the youngest of three sons born to Charley and Joyce Bowen, said his brother Charley was a better football player than he was for Lawrence High and Kansas University. Charley said his kid brother Clint was a harder worker.

For a third opinion, I visited Bowen Ditching Services, a business founded in 1973 and at its current location in North Lawrence since 1980. Big Charley and wife Joyce own the business for which Chad and Little Charley work. Clint, interim head coach of KU’s football program, is the lone Bowen who never has worked for the family business.

“Clint definitely worked harder,” Chad said. “Clint was a smart football player. He studied a lot, films and stuff. He could tell what an opponent was going to do before they ever got to the field, where Charley was just a natural, get-to-the-ball kind of guy.”

Chad said he and his cousins would watch Clint’s games and get a kick out of seeing what Clint told them they would see.

“Clint would watch film and see which guy was lollygagging down the field on kickoffs and punts,” Chad said, the memory triggering a big laugh. “He’d tell us before the game, ‘You better watch number so-and-so because I’m going to clean his plow. I’m going to take him out of the game.’ I’d be watching with my cousins and I’d tell them, ‘You’ve got to watch this because Clint’s going to take this guy out.'”

And then they would watch Clint fulfill his promise.

“Sometimes Clint would run by the guy with the football to hit the kid over there,” Chad said, meaning the player he promised he would take out of the game. “It was always fun to watch him do that.”

Joyce enjoyed hearing her oldest son’s story about her youngest son.

“Like Chad said, Clint was the hardest worker,” Joyce said. “He even got a job with a dairy farmer when he was 8 or 9 years old and worked for him for a couple of years. He helped him bring the cows in and he’d milk ’em or feed ’em.”

Clint saved the money he earned and convinced his father to take him to a cow sale, where he purchased one of his own. It had a calf that Clint named, “Firecracker.”

“He sold the pair for a profit,” Joyce said. “Clint’s always been pretty sharp that way.”

Chad cracked: “He probably has that same dollar he made on that sale.”

Joyce was happy to see her son focus on football because she considered it safer than one of his other passions.

“Those motocross bikes he used to race,” she said. “I didn’t like that. Every time he went flying, I ….”she finished the sentence.

Clint was the first to make football his lifelong career, although Little Charley did play for pay in the Arena Football League. Football isn’t the family business, but it always has been the family passion. During his high school days, the Bowen boys’ father was known as “Chuck” and was pictured in Life Magazine, which chose Lawrence High as the school to tell the story of high school football through photographs in its Nov. 7, 1960 edition. He was a high school football All-American and all three sons played the sport.

Chad played at Perry-Lecompton High. Big Charley asked Little Charley and Clint if they would rather play for his alma mater, LHS. When they both answered in the affirmative, mom and dad sold their Perry home and moved to Lawrence. After Clint finished high school, the Bowens moved back to Perry.

Clint walked on as a freshman at KU and then, after not receiving a scholarship, transferred to Butler County Community College. After a year there, he decided to walk on at KU again. Not long into summer workouts, KU coach Glen Mason surprised him with a scholarship offer. As a senior in 1993, Clint led KU in tackles with 114, third-most by a defensive back in KU history.

Bowen has spent 15 of his 18 seasons as a Div. I assistant coach at Kansas.

“He said it himself, that’s all he ever wanted to be was head coach at KU, kept coming back: ‘I’m coming back mom.’ I said, ‘OK.’ I told him, ‘Some day you will be.’ He’d just look at me,” Joyce said.

KU’s interim head coach lives in Lawrence with wife Kristie and sons Baylor and Banks.

“Beautiful wife,” Joyce said with pride. “And she’s just as nice as she is pretty. And those two boys, they’re ornery.”

Just like her three?

“That’s right,” she said. “Let’s just say they were very competitive with each other. They’d fight a lot.”

Charley the son recalled one of the fights.

“I was a big fan of the Dallas Cowboys and Clint was a big fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers,” he recalled. “I don’t remember what it was he was mad at me for, but he took my new Cowboys helmet and slammed it against the fireplace, scratched it all up.”

A dirty helmet didn’t prevent Charley from a standout career as a safety at KU or from playing for pay. After his career was over, he joined the family business, which entails?

“If it’s in the dirt, we’ll dig it,” Joyce said. “Septic systems and water lines and sewer lines. And we build ponds, build rock walls. Whatever anybody wants done that has to do with dirt, we’ll do it. Chad is really good at landscaping. He’s our loader man. He’s got a big loader machine. Both Charleys run back hoes.”

She was on a roll plugging the family business when she stopped herself to slip in a plug for her baby boy.

“Clint’s good for the job, I think,” she said. “Of course, I’m the mother. But I do think he’s good for the job. He knows how to treat people.”