Adarius Bowman of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers during the official TSN session for CFL at the Axworthy Health & RecPlex Centre in Winnipeg MB, Friday, March 23, 2017 (Photo: Johany Jutras)
He was humble and he was thankful. And as Adarius Bowman addressed an enraptured crowd gathered for the Canadian Football League Most Outstanding Player Awards late last November, he spoke eloquently about the honour he had just received.
The prestigious Tom Pate Memorial Award – presented annually by the Canadian Football League Players Association to the player ‘who best exemplifies outstanding sportsmanship and who has contributed significantly to his team and community’ – is one Bowman considers his greatest accomplishment as an athlete.
“I entered an elite group that night that some players don’t even know exists,” said Bowman. “It’s meant so much to me since then. A door has opened and now I’ve had athletes approach me and talk to me differently because of it. That makes me feel good… way better than getting a touchdown.
“I’m sorry if that doesn’t sound right, but it’s true. And I love scoring touchdowns, I love making the crowd happy. But when I walked up there in Ottawa last November to give that speech… it touched me.”
This is the Adarius Bowman fans across the CFL know now so well. A giving man. A thoughtful man. The guy who created Adarius 4 Autism – a non-profit organization which raises awareness for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder – in January of 2017.
But this is not the same Adarius Bowman who first crossed the 49th parallel back in 2008. Back then, he was a should-have-been-an-NFL-first rounder with unquestioned talent, but with more red flags than a May Day parade in Moscow.
This is a look at that transformation from a me-first talent to a talented player/humanitarian. This is the Evolution of Adarius Bowman…
Adarius Bowman of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers during the official TSN session for CFL at the Axworthy Health & RecPlex Centre in Winnipeg MB, Friday, March 23, 2017 (Photo: Johany Jutras)
It was the summer of 2007 and there was a palpable buzz around Bowman. He had carved out a place as one of the best receivers in college football, stiff-arming an inauspicious start to his collegiate career when he had been punted from the North Carolina Tar Heels program – along with two other players – for possession of marijuana.
After transferring to Oklahoma State, the shine on Bowman’s star was blinding following a 2006 campaign in which he was named the Big 12 Offensive Newcomer of the Year and the Cowboys’ MVP. And as he prepared for the ’07 season – his senior year – ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper, Jr. had rated him as one of the country’s top talents at his position and ranked him 19th overall.
“First round. That’s what everybody was telling me,” recalled Bowman in a long and heartfelt chat with bluebombers.com during CFL Week. “That’s all I heard from everyone.”
He put up decent numbers in 2007 – 61 catches for 932 yards and seven touchdowns – but after running a 4.74 40, his stock began a downward spiral. It was only further crushed by another arrest for marijuana possession in April of 2008 – just a few weeks before the NFL Draft.
He wasn’t drafted, and despite interest from both the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles, wasn’t even signed as a free agent. And that’s when the CFL first appeared on his radar screen.
In May of that year, he signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, who held his CFL rights.
“I was given an opportunity to come to Canada and it was Regina,” said Bowman. “When I got there, I was immediately calling my agent every day. It was like, ‘Man, trade me. This place sucks.’ It felt like ‘Little House on the Prairie’ to me. It was, ‘Where am I?’”
“People may not remember, but when I first got to Regina I was nine-gamed (put on the injured list). I would have nine-gamed me, too, the way I was talking then. I wasn’t injured, but just complaining.”
“My wish was answered and I got traded to Winnipeg in ’09. (Then head coach) Mike Kelly was there and he gave me an amazing opportunity. It felt good. It wasn’t as big as Toronto, but it wasn’t ‘Little House on the Prairie’, either. I had a decent year, ended the season as the leading receiver and re-signed in Winnipeg. Life was great.”
Adarius Bowman of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers during the official TSN session for CFL at the Axworthy Health & RecPlex Centre in Winnipeg MB, Friday, March 23, 2017 (Photo: Johany Jutras)
That offseason Kelly was replaced by Paul LaPolice, the same man who had been the offensive boss in Saskatchewan when Bowman first came to the CFL. And let’s just say their relationship – now rock solid – wasn’t nearly as rosy.
“In 2010, he becomes the head coach in Winnipeg and when I saw that in the paper it automatically shifted my mood,” Bowman admitted. “I was trying to flush what happened to me in Saskatchewan and then I felt it was all coming back. It wasn’t that I wasn’t understanding LaPo, it was that I was looking at it negatively. It was, ‘I don’t want to play for this dude.’
“So I did some things in 2010 that made my career look bad – I wasn’t paying attention, I wasn’t showing up on time, not cooperating… I was a mess that year, but I didn’t care at the time. I should have, because it can get taken away from you.
“And it did.”
The Bombers, weary of Bowman’s struggles with drops and his attitude, released him on October 20, 2010.
“I deserved it,” said Bowman. “And then it hit me: ‘I’m jobless.’”
Bowman was given another chance with the Edmonton Eskimos, who signed him in January of 2011 – almost three months after his release from Winnipeg. He rediscovered his game in green and gold, finishing the 2011 season with 62 catches for 1,153 yards and four TDs.
He opened the 2012 season with five catches for 110 yards in a win over the Toronto Argonauts, but a week later, disaster struck when he blew out his knee against the Roughriders.
And just like that, his year was done.
Adarius Bowman of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers during the official TSN session for CFL at the Axworthy Health & RecPlex Centre in Winnipeg MB, Friday, March 23, 2017 (Photo: Johany Jutras)
“As much as I had a good year in 2011, I was still not happy because I couldn’t get out of my contract (NFL interest had grown) and I got salty again,” Bowman said. “I had grown a little bit from the days of being salty in Winnipeg, but I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to talk to anybody. I’m just going to ball and get the hell out of here.’
“And then Week 2 – Boom! – I blow out my ACL. That’s when life began to really change for me. The game was really taken from me. I remember having the surgery and just before the doctor said, ‘There’s an eight percent chance you will never be the same.’ To me, that eight sounded like 80.
“It was scary, man,” he added. “I was pushing everybody away in my life then. I didn’t want to date anyone, talk to anyone. But that’s when I also started to really grow as a person. Life does that too you sometimes. You’re not grateful for things, you don’t appreciate things, you’re not thankful for the simplest of things.
“The game was taken away from me and it was then that I realized how important it was to me. That year, 2012, was my breaking point. Now, I wouldn’t say I was a rude person. I had a nice smile, but there was something in me… and I’ve let that piece of me go.”
There wasn’t any one moment that brought about this epiphany for Bowman. His transformation, evolution, maturation – the words all fit – came during the months after he was shelved because of the surgery.
In the years since 2012, his spiritual side has grown stronger. He’s married now and he and his wife are expecting their first child next month. He’s older, wiser and comfortable in his own skin. Most of all, he’s just more appreciative of what the game – and his life in Canada in the CFL – has provided for him and his family.
And that is a complete 180 from the man who came to Canada 10 years ago.
“I used to think everything was a given,” he said. “Back then it was, ‘Why aren’t they giving me this?’ ‘They should have given me that’ and ‘Why are they giving it to him, rather than me?’ Thinking and saying those things affects how you look at every situation. Instead, I could have been saying, ‘Man, I’m so grateful for this opportunity. I’m so grateful for this privilege. I’m so thankful I was able to wake up this morning and go to a meeting with Paul LaPolice trying to coach me.’ It used to be, ‘Why isn’t he letting me do this? I want to do this.’
“We’re all human and we all have emotions, all the human qualities. My spiritual and belief side has always been strong, but it was in the moments where I let this life make me forget that, and shy away from it, that affected me.
“I used to say it was ‘this business’ that did this to me. That’s not fair. It’s life.”
Bowman takes a breath here and scans a room full of CFL players telling their stories to reporters during the CFL Week’s media day.
“I look around and see all these guys from the league here, I hope they aren’t thinking this is a given,” he said. “This is a privilege. It’s a privilege to do this.”
Adarius Bowman of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers during the official TSN session for CFL at the Axworthy Health & RecPlex Centre in Winnipeg MB, Friday, March 23, 2017 (Photo: Johany Jutras)
What Bowman has learned in his 10 years in the CFL is bigger than to not just take the game for granted. It’s about soaking up each day on the planet. That’s why his charity work is so important to him, why he signs every autograph and doesn’t miss a meeting.
He’s 32 now and understands football’s finish line is fast approaching. And so, heck yeah, he’ll live in the moment when it comes to football.
But it’s the perspective that comes with his own maturity that changed him and his outlook on everything else.
A changed man? That might sound horribly cliché, but it fits.
“I’m lucky. I go into a store and I get to choose what colour shirt I want,” said Bowman. “Some people don’t even have a single shirt and can’t get it.
“Sometimes you have to fall to understand all this. I had to learn who I really am. I had to learn to accept some things. I had to come to understand what my strengths and weaknesses are as a person. I’ve accepted who I am now.
“You know, we can’t change the past. Even what I did when I was here in Winnipeg in the past, I can’t change it. But I’m here again today to be better. That’s the thing… sometimes you get another opportunity in life.”
“I’m not just Adarius with a number now. I want to show people who I really am and what I can really bring to your team and your city.”
