Bowden reveals 2007 cancer battle

Published Sep. 13, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Former Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden says in an interview with USA Today that he was treated for prostate cancer in early 2007.

In an interview published in Tuesday's edition, Bowden says he kept the details hidden from everyone except family members for the past four years.

Bowden was treated by one of his former players who was captain of the coach's first team at FSU in 1976. Dr. Joe Camps, a urologist and surgical oncologist, implanted low-dose radiation seeds in Bowden's prostate, a procedure known as brachytherapy.

The longtime Seminoles coach says he is now cancer free.

The 81-year-old says that if he knew at the time what he knows now, he would have considered it ''my moral duty to bring it out in the open.''