Bobby Bowden, former head football coach at Florida State, revealed he had prostate cancer in 2007 and went through treatment without notifying anyone at the university.
While at Florida State from 1976-2009, Bowden had a record of 304-97-3, won national titles in 1993 and 1999, and finished second in all-time wins with 389 wins.
Bowden, now 81, said he decided to go public about his illness to raise awareness about prostate cancer. He will serve as a spokesman for the 'On The Line' campaign, a cancer education initiative, which will encourage men to talk to their doctors about prostate cancer.
"They wanted someone who had been through it, and I'm a survivor," Bowden told ESPN. "It inflicts more men than breast cancer inflicts women, but men don't talk about it. I'm trying to make people more aware of it."
Bowden said he was worried his illness could be used against him by rival coaches in recruiting and wanted to keep the focus on his team and not his condition.
"In recruiting, if people find out you have some kind of problem, they're going to magnify it," Bowden said. "If you have cancer, they're going to make it sound like you're dying. It would have been all over the country."
The only people who knew of his condition were his wife, Ann, their children and his doctors. Bowden went to a doctor he knew well in Dr. Joseph L. Camps Jr., a defensive back and captain on Bowden's first team at Florida State in 1976. Camps completed a brachytherapy, a form of internal radiation, in April 2007 at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.
"We took him to surgery in the middle of the night and shut down a wing of the hospital," Camps said. "We identified him as 'Robert B' and then treated him through outpatient treatment."
Retired since 2009, Bowden said it was just a routine physical that saved his life.
"If the doctors hadn't told me I had it, I probably would have never known," he said.
