At the 1996 NFL combine — the annual festival at which wannabe professional football players are poked and prodded and sized up like sides of beef — an evaluator asked Reggie Barlow what one thing might keep him from playing in the NFL. Size? Speed? Hands? Barlow, a receiver and kick returner from out-of-the-way Alabama State, had a different response.
“Death,” he said. “D.E.A.T.H.”
Barlow still walks among the living and breathing, so he must have made it. He did as a player, becoming a dangerous return man in five seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars, and winning a Super Bowl while on the roster of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers over his final two years.
That story from the combine more than a quarter of a century ago represented Barlow the player, an indication that his chief skill was determination. It represents Barlow the 51-year-old coach, too. The jobs are different. The goal is the same.
“Since I’ve gotten the coaching bug, you definitely want to coach at the highest level, right?” Barlow said. “You want to know how you measure up.”
Right now, Barlow is measuring up perfectly. On Saturday night in San Antonio, he will lead his D.C. Defenders into the XFL championship game against the Arlington (Tex.) Renegades. Barlow’s Defenders have won 10 of their 11 games, including the North Division championship that put them in position to win the whole thing.
This minor league game will be on national television, which shows the thirst for football broadly but matters for Barlow specifically. If any NFL owner or executive flips on the game, they’ll see a familiar face — former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops leads the Arlington team — against an unfamiliar one in Barlow, who has toiled at Alabama State and Virginia State, a former NFL player who hasn’t yet received the chance to coach in the league in which he played.
Why is that?
“We’re well aware of the lack of minorities, and that’s another reason why this opportunity is so good for us and for me is because a lot of the times what owners are looking for usually is, ‘I want a guy that’s been a head coach or a guy that’s been a coordinator,’ ” Barlow said by phone this week. “Well, there aren’t enough minorities who are coordinators — offense, defense, special teams. The picking becomes slim, and then not many of them have been head coaches in the pros or whatever.
“But we’re hoping with these type of opportunities, more minorities, Black guys can come and show that you can lead a group of men, you can have a plan. Our platform is a great platform.”
Barlow knows the history: In 103 NFL seasons, there have been 26 Black head coaches. Houston’s DeMeco Ryans will become the 27th this fall. Five of those have only had the interim tag.
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. That led to a volunteer position at Sidney Lanier High, his alma mater, which led to a job coaching quarterbacks at Alabama State, which led to the interim head coaching position when the head man left for an assistant job with the Oakland Raiders, which led to being installed as the permanent head coach maybe a week later, which eventually led to consecutive seasons in which the Hornets went 7-5, 8-3, 7-4, 8-4 and 7-5, which led to …
Wait. It led to getting fired?
“Nothing broke my heart more than that,” Barlow said. At the beginning of the season, he had been offered a contract extension and a raise. In the middle, the Hornets lost four straight games and the athletic director asked him to resign — which he refused to do. When his contract wasn’t renewed following the year, he ended up suing his alma mater for wrongful termination. The suit was eventually tossed out. Barlow was without a job.
“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 the coronavirus pandemic — he went 34-16. During this entire run — seven seasons as an NFL player, 13 seasons as a college head coach — he has had one interview to be an NFL assistant, with the Cleveland Browns in the mid-2010s, when Mike Pettine was the head coach.
“I thought that went well,” Barlow said. “But they went with someone else. As you know, a lot of times it’s about who you know and stuff like that.”
So here he is, knowing an entirely new group of people, one he assembled.
“They gave me a sheet of paper and said, ‘You’re the head coach. Go and hire your director of player personnel, your team operations person, find a coaching staff and then go find a team,’ ” Barlow said. “That model is extremely similar to the NFL model. The only difference is there, you have a team. ‘Well, we need four more DBs and one D-tackle.’ It’s not as hard as trying to get 51 guys.”
Barlow got his 51 guys. But he also intentionally hired Von Hutchins, a Black former NFL player, to be in charge of personnel. He intentionally hired Stacie Johnson, a Black woman, to be his director of team operations. He assembled a coaching staff that included veteran NFL defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. He became the XFL’s coach of the year.
“All of the executives that run this league,” Barlow said, “they want this experience to be an experience that shows the best, highest league in our world: Here’s a person that can do what you’re looking for.”
So regardless of the outcome Saturday, will Reggie Barlow head into the offseason knocking on NFL doors saying, “See what I just did? What assistants jobs do you have open?”
“I definitely want to put myself in place to have conversations with people that can give me pointers and continue to develop this chemistry with people knowing what it takes, what it looks like,” he said. “If that opportunity comes, I’d definitely welcome it, love to talk with people about it.
“But when I first got to Virginia State, I thought, ‘We’ll come here and maybe win the first two years, and then we’ll be gone.’ I found myself looking around, and that wasn’t right. I always talk about: Be where your feet are. We’re so happy and blessed to be here, and we’ll continue to do the work here.”
The work is mostly done. Doesn’t Reggie Barlow at least deserve a look?