The questions, three of them, are short but open-ended:

1) What are you up to nowadays?

2) What are your thoughts on the state of Clemson Football?

3) What do you make of the current landscape of college athletics amid the transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness?

ALSO SEE: THE CLEMSON 30: Charlie Whitehurst | THE CLEMSON 30: Tymere Zimmerman | THE CLEMSON 30: Jeff Francoeur | THE CLEMSON 30: Michael Dean Perry

Tigerillustrated.com has spent the past two months tracking down 30 former Clemson football figures whose names still resonate with fans.

We will spend the better part of the next two months sharing their responses.

Today our fifth installment in THE CLEMSON 30 series features former Clemson defensive lineman Da'Quan Bowers.

I'm the defensive line coach at South Florida under Jeff Scott. Before that I worked under Todd Bates on the defensive line at Clemson.

This is a great opportunity for me to stay connected to the game. As a competitor, football is always in my blood. This is a way for me to get my competitive juices flowing every day.

I met my wife, Monique, when I was playing for Tampa Bay. We have a 3-year-old son, and we're expecting our second son in April. I also have a 10-year-old daughter.

One thing that helps me now is to have been at Clemson and seen the amount of work and attention to detail everyone had there. The position coaches had so much trust in the support staffers in allowing us to have important responsibilities. That was part of the culture there. The position coaches put trust in me to build relationships with the players who were there, and that prepared me to have my own room when I got here. They also put me in charge of having my own drills in practice, my own segments, and I took pride in it. I think they saw potential in me, and that's what allowed me to get this opportunity here.

I'm grateful that I'm here, and I look forward to a lot of years in this business and learning from future coaches, being innovative and just adapting with the game. The game is changing every day, and as a young coach you've got to be ready to adapt and learn and roll with the punches.

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I've lived out my dream of playing football, but this is an opportunity to put it all into one: I can compete in the game I love, and I also have the opportunity to affect young men's lives in a positive way. That's what it's truly about. I take all of my experiences -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- and give back to these young men every day. It's truly a blessing.

I have a unique perspective, and I'm not sure many have the perspective I do from being able to witness it as both a player and a coach. I got to witness the foundation being laid when I was a player there, and not many people believed in the vision other than him and the people in the building. And then I got to be a part of it as a coach when we won the national championship.

It's really amazing. Clemson is one of the most consistent programs in all of college football. Eleven consecutive 10-win seasons. Coach Swinney and his staff have done an unbelievable job. And it all goes back to his vision. Like I said, not many people on the outside believed in it early on.

He's done such a great job of keeping former players connected, including me when he allowed me the opportunity to come back and be a part of that staff and see from a coach's lens what the program had flourished into, to be able to get my feet wet in coaching and have a chance to coach at the championship level. I learned from the best in the business and had an opportunity to be groomed by Brent Venables and that defensive staff that he had. Just being around some of the men Coach Swinney had on that staff, like Tony Elliott and Jeff Davis and Woody McCorvey, people that are mentors in my life, was so beneficial to me.

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It's incredible what they've done, and I'm excited for where they're going to go in the future. They still have a lot of bright spots ahead of them, and I'm excited to watch it.

I was a part of the foundation, and that's why it's so special to watch today.

Being a new coach, it's new to everybody else and to me also. I only had a year of the old way in 2020, but this is going to be my normal as a coach. Coaches are going to have to adapt. For certain schools, the transfer portal is a useful tool but for others it could be a dangerous tool that kind of works against them.

We're all just kind of navigating it and figuring it out because it's the first time that everybody's going through it. I'm sure it'll take some getting used to, and there will be a learning curve. But that's why coaches coach, and we'll figure it out and try to navigate around it.

For a team like ours at USF, we were able to get some really good players out of the portal to help improve our roster. Who knows whether we'll take less or more in the future; that's from year to year and it's not really my call.

For NIL, I think it's a good and amazing situation for these young men. I wish they had it when I played in college, because I probably could've monetized a lot of things. But I'm excited for these young men. It gives them an opportunity to use their brand and that's important. These guys work hard to be the best at their craft and to earn these opportunities to play on the national stages at these big universities, and they should be able to profit from an NIL standpoint. I think it's awesome.

We don't know where these deals are headed and where things are going to end up in the next couple of years, but it's an opportunity for them to put money in their pockets. I remember times in college when I didn't have any money and I was struggling to put gas in my car, and even though I was on scholarship I was struggling to eat at times. This will also allow some of them to help their families. Not everybody comes from the same situation, so anytime you can add an extra stream of income and you're able to take that burden away from your parents, or just help them with some money, that's a blessing in itself.

It's so new to everybody, but I'm excited to learn about it and navigate through it.

Tomorrow Tigerillustrated.com will release the sixth installment of THE CLEMSON 30.

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