About Inductee

As a football player in high school and college, Tim Stowers was the epitome of the proverbial undersized and underrated overachiever. As a college coach, he learned from two of the best and achieved the pinnacle of his profession, a national championship, in his first season out of the gate as a head coach. He is still fondly remembered in the halls of Grissom High School, where he played for coach Larrie Robinson and made All-State in 1975 as a linebacker and center. From 1976-78, Stowers played football at Auburn University under coach Doug Barfield, and later worked closely as a graduate assistant and junior varsity coach under Barfields successor, Pat Dye, who won four SEC championships in the 1980s. Stowers has a BS degree and an ME degree from Auburn. His 27-year coaching career took him from Auburn (1982-83) to offensive line coach at Jacksonville State in 1984 and then to Georgia Southern, where he first coached the O-line for legendary Erk Russell from 1990-96. The Eagles won the NCAA Division I-AA national championship with a 15-0 record in 1989 after finishing runner-up at 13-2 in 1988. When Russell retired after the 89 season, Stowers was elevated to head coach and the Eagles didnt miss a beat, winning their second straight national title in 1990 and Stowers was named I-AA National Coach of the Year. In seven years at Georgia Southern, he compiled a 51-23 record and won the Southern Conference championship in 1993. He was out of coaching in 1987, but returned in 1998-99 as the offensive line coach at Temple University. He was then picked to resurrect the University of Rhode Islands football program in 2000. His 2001 Rhode Island team went 8-3 and his 03 team set the all-time Atlantic 10 rushing record (334 yards per game). Stower became a financial services representative in 2008 and now works as a registered representative in Warwick, R.I. Thirty-five years after his high school career ended, Stowers still cites his high school coach, Larrie Robinson, and Robinsons assistant coaches as the most influential persons in the career path he chose. Coach Robinson and his staff became my fathers after my own dad died when I was 12, Stowers said, They were the main reasons I went into coaching. Stowers was born in Union Springs, Ala., on Feb. 8, 1958 and moved to Huntsville in 1968 when his father was named superintendent of the city schools. Stowers and his wife Gaye have two children, Tim, 23, and Lee, 19.