Perspective: As Black coaches face the NFL's glass ceiling, Reggie Barlow looked elsewhere. Now, he's the XFL's coach of the year and closing in on a title that he hopes will open doors.
Barlow isn’t pointing fingers, and he isn’t unhappy about his current fate. “This has been so fun,” he said. But his journey is instructive. When he was done playing, he immediately turned to coaching.
“I would have been tickled to death if I’d been the head coach at my middle school,” he said. So he began by volunteering at what was then called Bellingrath Junior High in his hometown of Montgomery, Ala.
“Depressed,” he said. “I didn’t do anything. I stayed in the house all day in the dark, just trying to figure some things out.” During this time, his mother, Barbara, gave him some advice: “Separate the ‘who’ from the ‘do.’ Don’t be mad at the university.” So Reggie Barlow got back up. He took a job teaching middle school physical education. The next fall, he thought he was taking one high school job, then another, but Virginia State called. His second team became the first in school history to go unbeaten in the regular season. In five seasons over six years — the 2020 campaign was canceled by thepandemic — he went 34-16.
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