Five things to know about Alan Bowman, Oklahoma State football's new transfer quarterback

STILLWATER — Oklahoma State is now set to go into spring football practice with four quarterbacks competing for the starting job, and the newest addition is the instant favorite.

Alan Bowman, the transfer from Michigan who also spent a good portion of three years as a starter at Texas Tech, committed to the Cowboys on Monday and comes to Stillwater with a vast experience advantage over the other three in-house candidates.

Garret Rangel and Gunnar Gundy combined to start four games as freshmen this past season, and Zane Flores was still slinging it for Gretna High School in Nebraska, where he led his team to a Class A title game appearance.

So Bowman has the early edge, having started 16 games in his career and thrown for more than 5,300 yards with 34 touchdowns and a career 67.1% completion rate.

Here are five things to know about the frontrunner to be Oklahoma State’s next starting quarterback:

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Alan Bowman's journey through the Grapevine

Bowman was a top-100 recruit in the state of Texas coming out of Grapevine High School in the 2018 class. He earned the starting job as a freshman in 2014, and over his career, he threw for 11,393 yards with 119 touchdowns.

As a senior, he threw for 3,570 yards with 38 touchdowns to become a top-30 quarterback recruit in the nation, ultimately committing to then-Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury over offers from programs like Cincinnati, Illinois, Houston and others.

The Bowman family has seen the Bedlam rivalry from a different perspective. Both of Alan’s sisters, Tori and Emily, played soccer for OU.

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A Tech-nical wizard

Bowman played his first season under Kingsbury at Texas Tech, then the next two seasons under Matt Wells, throwing for 5,260 yards with 33 touchdowns and 17 interceptions over 19 games (16 starts).

His career touchdown-to-interception ratio is almost exactly 2-to-1, a number Cowboy fans will welcome to Stillwater. OSU hasn’t had such a number from its starting quarterback since Taylor Cornelius threw 32 touchdowns with 13 interceptions in 2018.

Bowman has a career completion percentage of 67.1, a number no OSU starter has reached since Brandon Weeden completed 72.4% of his passes in 2011.

Bowman isn’t the athlete Sanders — or even Cornelius — was, having rushed 46 times for minus-9 yards in his career.

Bowman didn’t win the Texas Tech starting job out of fall camp in 2018, but he had taken over before the end of the season opener. He went on to start seven games that year, limited by injuries.

He went 4-3 as the starter, but Tech was 1-4 without him and Kingsbury was fired after the season.

Bowman played in 11 games over two seasons with Wells at the helm, but never found the rhythm he had experienced in his first season.

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Injury woes for Alan Bowman

If there’s a major knock on Bowman, it’s his ability to stay on the field. He appeared in 19 games over three years at Texas Tech, starting 16, but most of the absences were injury-related.

He suffered a collapsed lung on two occasions in 2018, limiting him to eight games. He played three games in 2019 but broke his collarbone and elected to redshirt. Then in 2020, an ankle injury kept him to just eight games once again.

Those days are well behind him now, though his game experience was limited at Michigan, stuck behind a pair of Big Ten-winning quarterbacks, Cade McNamara and J.J. McCarthy.

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A Boone Pickens Stadium star

OSU fans might’ve blocked out the memory of the two times they saw Bowman in person, considering how poorly he treated the Pokes.

Early in his true freshman season of 2018, Bowman led Texas Tech to a 41-17 upset of OSU at Boone Pickens Stadium, completing 35 of 46 passes (76.1%) for 397 yards and two touchdowns.

Two years later, he nearly did it again, throwing for 384 yards and three touchdowns in a 50-44 loss to the Cowboys.

In all, that’s 781 yards and five touchdowns in two BPS appearances.

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Alan Bowman's Michigan days

After three years and two head coaches at Tech, Bowman entered the portal in January of 2021, joining a Michigan quarterback room that already had McNamara and McCarthy, who was a five-star recruit coming out of high school.

Bowman was well respected in the locker room, but saw the field very little. He appeared in four games and completed eight of 11 passes over two seasons.

He entered the transfer portal in early December, but stayed with the team through the College Football Playoff semifinal.

But while he was wearing the maize and blue, Bowman rediscovered his love of football.

“There were definitely times in my life where football was hard,” Bowman told MLive.com last summer. “I felt I lost the love for it at some point. With so many injuries — I mean, the first four years of my career, I had four different offensive coordinators. So I could never get into a rhythm, I could never feel confident in myself, I was always getting injured. I didn’t know how good I could be.

“I was always the, ‘Is he gonna be able to stay healthy’ guy. So yeah, there were a couple of times and doubts in my head going through, ‘Is it worth all this going through it?’ I’m so glad that I did and I came to Michigan. It’s paid off in every way.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State football: Alan Bowman, what to know about transfer QB