Even Mike Gundy makes fun of Alan Bowman’s age, but the Cowboy quarterback laughs it off as he readies for the 2024 season.

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STILLWATER — Not even Alan Bowman’s friends and family understand what he’s doing still hanging out on a college campus, wearing shoulder pads and taking snaps.

Aunts and uncles ask the question: Tell me again how you’re able to play a seventh year of college football?

Bowman, of course, has an easy answer. He reels it off with the rhythm of Henry the VIII’s wives: divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.

Bowman’s path: Play, medical waiver, Covid waiver, redshirt, play (a little), play and, now, play a seventh year.

“It’s insane,” Bowman said.

The OSU quarterback is 24 years old, and he’s not even the oldest quarterback of the Mike Gundy era. Not by a longshot. Brandon Weeden was 23 when he enrolled at OSU, after four seasons of minor-league baseball. Weeden was 28 when the Cleveland Browns made him a first-round pick in the 2012 NFL Draft.

But Bowman didn’t take a baseball detour. He’s got a Master’s degree from Michigan and is working on another from OSU, and he’s quarterbacked 33 college football games.

In 2018, Bowman staged quarterback duels against West Virginia’s Will Grier, who played for the 2014 Florida Gators; Kansas’ Peyton Bender, who played for the 2014 Washington State Cougars; and OSU’s Taylor Cornelius, who was a 2014 Cowboy.

Bowman was recruited by Arkansas when Bret Bielema was the Razorback coach, by Ole Miss when Hugh Freeze was the Rebel coach and by Houston when Tom Herman was the Cougar coach.

None of which is strange, except Bowman still is a college football quarterback. 

Or maybe that’s not so strange. At least to Bowman. Strange will be when Bowman no longer is on a college campus.

“In a weird way, it’s all I’ve ever known, playing college football,” Bowman said. “It’s 6½ years now. It’s just like, I can remember a lot of things from high school, but for the majority of my life, this is all I’ve known, is just this.”

If you discount ages 0-6, when memories are few and fuzzy, more than a third of Bowman’s life has been spent in college, at Texas Tech and Michigan and now OSU.

And heck, Bowman isn’t even the oldest Cowboy on the team. Linebacker Justin Wright, another seven-year collegian, is a few weeks older than Bowman.

“There’s nothing different,” Bowman said. Tight end “Braden Cassity was 25 last year, I just turned 24. I wouldn’t say I’m like crazy old. But realistically, it’s all I know.”

Bowman takes all kinds of grief, coming from his head coach to his fellow veterans to the newcomers who are six years younger.

Mike Gundy reels off the advantages for an old quarterback: “AARP, social security, potentially, before it runs out. Lot of experience … hairline’s fading back a little bit.”

Bowman knows he has to accept such nonsense. He hears it from all sides. From freshmen to his veteran offensive linemen, who include sixth-year players Dalton Cooper, Jake Springfield, Preston Wilson, Cole Birmingham, Joe Michalski and Taylor Miterko, plus fifth-year senior Jason Brooks.

“That’s what makes it fun,” Bowman said. “It is nice to not be four, five years older than (every)body else.

“Everybody wants to come back for a reason. We all know that we have the potential to be really good. So we just gotta put the work in. Come together as one. And we’re going to be really good.”

When the freshmen rib him about his age, Bowman points out they were in the seventh grade when he began his college career in Houston’s NRG Stadium, quarterbacking Tech vs. Ole Miss, throwing for 273 yards.

“And everybody kind of banters with me, being old, the old guy, old head, but it’s OK,” Bowman said. “That’s what you get for coming back. I expect that.”

Bowman has a bachelor’s degree in business from Texas Tech, a master’s in business supply chain management from Michigan and now is working on a master’s in recreation and leisure management from OSU. Bowman figures if he’d stayed at one school for all seven years, he’d been closing in on a doctoral degree.

“But what would I want to be a doctor in?” Bowman said. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of studying and papers and writing. It’s a lot to be able to do all that.”

Instead, Bowman is working on his thesis, which means one class a week and lots of independent study. Most of it in football.

Bowman seems to have realized that he is having the time of his life.

“If you had told me my freshman year, that I would need seven years to finish college football, I would have told you you were crazy,” Bowman said. “I tell all these guys all the time, because everybody wants to play, ‘oh I don’t want to redshirt. Or the covid year or this and that.’ But you never know. You never know, and to use all of them (years), and take all of them.”

ICYMI: A look at how much has changed since a year ago today for #OKState standouts Ollie Gordon and Nick Martin.https://t.co/wu7XYLfg3a

— Jenni Carlson (@JenniCarlson_OK) April 14, 2024

Bowman knows that except for circumstance — an injury here, a pandemic there — he’d long be on to his next stage of life. A job in Dallas. In an NFL minicamp.

“Who knows?” Bowman asked. “But at least I know I’m just really glad, because of some injuries, because of Covid, because of things that happened, that I am so glad I got this year back, because now I get to put it all together.”

Bowman then showed some wisdom that comes with age. He got to play a lot of football at age 23 (last season) and hopefully gets to do the same at age 24.

“I would rather have it on the back end, than on the front end, when I didn’t know anything,” Bowman said.

Bowman is not a Weeden. Bowman does not have first-round draft talent. In Weeden’s two seasons as the starting QB, biding his time behind Zac Robinson (it was a different time), Weeden made all-Big 12 in 2010, then led OSU to a 12-1 record and the No. 3 national ranking in 2011.

Still, the Cowboys needed quarterback help when Bowman arrived in 2023. He eventually won the job and proved to be a valuable leader, if not a star passer. Now Gundy expresses confidence that Bowman still has room to improve as a quarterback, as a veteran hand and a veteran voice on the most veteran of teams.

“He’s been really good from day one and even more that he’s settled in during the last few months,” Gundy said. “More comfortable. I’ve always said, in my opinion, there’s not really any substitute for experience and maturity. We had a lot of success with Weeden. So these guys bring a lot to the table from experience.”

That experience allows Bowman to laugh at himself and laugh at the whole notion of a seven-year college quarterback. Or even eight.

“I told my fiance and my family, if anything happens, injury, we’ll probably be done,” Bowman said. “Eight’s pretty insane. We’ll just probably be done and call it quits.”

Bowman said he came to Stillwater thinking six would be it. He knew he could apply for a seventh year, and he knew the NCAA was passing out waivers like Mardi Gras beads. But he has an MBA from Michigan and had been hanging around college campuses for a good chunk of his life.

Then the 2023 Cowboys caught fire, won Bedlam, made the Big 12 Championship Game and a bunch of veterans decided to stick around.

“Kind of see how it goes” was Bowman’s thinking, he said, “then as the season panned out, and everyone was like, ‘hey, let’s run this thing back, see what we can do.’ I said, ‘yeah, all right, I’m down. Absolutely.’”

Year No. 7 for the quarterback working not just on his second Master’s, but a Ph.D. in college football.