The Making of Brian Newberry: From Baylor Roots to Naval Academy Success

FORT WORTH, Texas – To the outside observer, things looked bleak for head coach Brian Newberry and the Naval Academy when Oklahoma scored on its first two drives with relative ease to take an early 14-0 lead in the Armed Forces Bowl on Dec. 27, 2024.

After all, the Midshipmen had beaten their hated rival, No. 22 Army, just a few weeks earlier for the third time in nine years, so a loss to Oklahoma, one of the bluest of blue bloods in college football, to close the season was nothing to be ashamed about, especially considering that Navy didn't have a single player on its roster who received a scholarship offer to play for the Sooners coming out of high school.

Most people might have anticipated an Oklahoma runaway victory following the rough start. On Navy's sideline, however, confidence never wavered; it had been here before. This is what they train for.

At halftime, Newberry's message to the team was, "Keep battling, keep fighting. Do your job; that's all you have to worry about. Trust your teammates; they're going to do their job. Let's go play fundamental football."

The Midshipmen turned up their intensity and scored 21 unanswered points. In the fourth quarter, they took their first lead of the afternoon after a methodical eight-minute, 12-play, 66-yard drive was capped off by a bruising touchdown run from junior quarterback Blake Horvath.

Trailing 21-14 with less than two minutes remaining, Oklahoma rebounded with a touchdown in the closing seconds. Instead of sending the game to overtime with an extra point, the Sooners opted to go for the win and try their hand at a two-point conversion.

Following a timeout to set the defense, Oklahoma quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. took the snap, looked off his initial read to the right and stepped up in the pocket to extend the play, except there was one problem. He was immediately face-to-face with a cluster of Navy defenders.

Hawkins tried to run backward and make a man miss, but senior defensive end Justin Reed brought him to the ground to secure Navy's 21-20 upset win and 10th overall victory of the season, marking the sixth time in program history that the Midshipmen had reached double-digit wins.

Following the game-winning stop, the cameras quickly panned to Newberry, the second-year head coach, raising both arms in celebration and emphatically fist-pumping the air after the emotionally charged victory over his hometown Sooners with dozens of friends and family in attendance. 

Newberry joined Paul Johnson and Ken Niumatalolo as the third head coach in the history of the Naval Academy to earn double-digit wins, beat Army and win a bowl game in the same season.

But long before coaching ever crossed his mind, Newberry was just a kid from Oklahoma who was a Sooner fanatic with a part-time affinity for Baylor. Newberry's grandparents lived in Waco, and his grandfather, Warren, had a deep love for football and cheered for the Bears.

In September 1989, Warren headed north to cross the Red River and pick up his grandson to watch Baylor take on the No. 8 Sooners at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, otherwise known as "The Palace On The Prarie."

Before the game, Warren introduced his grandson, who was in high school at the time, to Baylor head coach Grant Teaff. This gave the younger Newberry a rooting interest and an appreciation for the BU program, although he didn't necessarily see himself going to school there in the future.

As the next couple of years came and went, Newberry had a successful varsity career at Westmoore High School, a 20-minute drive south of downtown Oklahoma City. Newberry played mostly quarterback and shared the backfield with running back Jeff Frazier, a national recruit in the 1992 class who eventually played at Oklahoma.

After the 1991 season, John Goodner, a long-time defensive assistant on Teaff's coaching staff at Baylor, came to Westmoore High School to pay Frazier a visit. Before Goodner had left, Newberry's head coach, Wayne Estes, told him, "There's somebody I want you to see."

Goodner and Estes entered the basketball gym and witnessed Newberry throwing down an array of eye-popping dunks, to which Newberry jokingly says over 30 years later, "Back then, I could jump out of the gym. I had pretty good springs on me."

Newberry's impressive athleticism caught Goodner's attention, prompting him to ask to see his high school film. Halfway through his senior season, Newberry also started to see some time on the field as a defensive back, ultimately the position he was recruited for. 

Shortly after Goodner's impromptu discovery, Newberry was offered a scholarship in Teaff's final recruiting class before he retired and committed to play football at Baylor.

"It was a done deal; it worked out perfectly," Newberry told SicEm365 in an interview.

Unfortunately, injuries derailed Newberry's collegiate career before it even took off. In the spring following his true freshman season, he suffered a type of Achilles tear so rare that the doctors mentioned it was the first one they'd seen of its kind in over 20 years. 

Instead of getting surgery, the doctors recommended that Newberry wear a cast pointed downward, which would eventually heal the frayed tendon. A lengthy rehabilitation process lingered into almost a two-year recovery, and even then, Newberry never felt he got back to 100% health-wise.

"Brian went through a lot of adversity with his Achilles, and that certainly affected him," said Hunter Barrow, one of Newberry's closest friends and former teammate, in an interview with SicEm365. "He worked so hard to get back into playing shape, and working through that adversity was great training for him as a coach and learning how to deal with such a setback."

Despite the injury, Newberry remained around the team in any way he could and never let his inability to play ruin his work ethic or attitude.

"You find out a lot about a guy when they get injured," former Baylor head coach Chuck Reedy said in an interview with SicEm365. "Some guys can disassociate themselves because they don't feel part of everything. In Brian's case, he always did the right thing. He was always involved in his meetings. He did everything he was supposed to do."

In addition to the injury issues, Newberry played for three different defensive coordinators and three different position coaches during his time at Baylor under Teaff and Reedy. With coaching changes came scheme changes, and Newberry never seemed to find his footing on the field.

"I learned a ton from that experience and some other things that I needed to learn at the time. Especially as a young person, your whole identification is based on being an athlete," Newberry said. 

"When that was stripped away from me for the first time in my life, that was a struggle, and I figured out who I was. That was such a defining moment for me. In retrospect, things that are painful at the time turn out to be the best things that could happen to you. It certainly helps me to relate to guys in my position now."

Even amidst the strenuous recovery process, coaching at the college level still wasn't necessarily at the forefront of Newberry's mind. He originally had aspirations of becoming a doctor, but those dreams were quickly shot down after his guidance counselor steered him in a different direction because of his 3.0 grade point average.

"I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. Growing up, I wasn't going around visiting campuses. Talking about what college I was going to go to wasn't a dinner discussion at my house," he said. "Had I not gone to Baylor, I'm not sure what I would have done. If I hadn't gotten a scholarship, we would have barely been able to afford college, so I was really fortunate, but I didn't know what I wanted to do."

Ultimately, Newberry chose to major in education, believing that coaching and teaching could offer a fulfilling career. His love for football remained strong, and the "tremendous" influence his high school coach had on him inspired a deep desire to give back in a similar way.

However, since he declared his major so late in his collegiate career, he had to remain in Waco for an extra year to finish his degree. Even though he was warming up to the idea of coaching, Reedy had been let go after four seasons as Baylor's head coach, and Newberry had no connections to the new coaching staff to stay as a graduate assistant.

Once he graduated, Newberry struggled to find a job immediately. He then opted to head west to Montana to work for a year as a tour guide at Glacier National Park, home to some of the most picturesque and breathtaking views in the United States.

"That was another defining moment for me, just going and trying to figure things out and getting out of Waco," Newberry said. "I really hadn't been anywhere prior to that and experience somewhere by myself. I was around different people from different parts of the country, and being a tour guide was unique because the other tour guides were from all over the place and were different ages."

While in Montana, Newberry continued to send out resumes in an attempt to land a coaching gig. Facing a dead end, he returned home and asked Teaff, his former coach, for guidance and help. 

After retiring as Baylor's head football coach following the 1992 season, Teaff became the American Football Coaches Association executive director in 1993. He instructed Newberry to attend an AFCA convention with him to promote his name. 

During the convention, Newberry made a connection and later took a job as a graduate assistant under Steve Roberts at Southern Arkansas University, a Division II school in Magnolia, Arkansas.

"I was hoping to get an FBS graduate assistantship, just like everybody else, but things worked out perfectly, and that's exactly what I needed at the time. If you're a GA at a Division II school, you get to coach a position, you get to recruit, you run a room. I cut grass, painted fields and cleaned locker rooms; I did it all," Newberry said. 

"I was always a high-effort guy. I always took a lot of pride in my work ethic and tried to outwork people and made sure that whether I had success or not, I deserved it. That always allowed me to put my head down on my pillow at night and sleep well."

While at Southern Arkansas, Newberry fell in love with coaching despite being naive about what it entailed at the collegiate level.

"I had no idea what I was getting into. I had no idea about the hours and the grind that it was. I didn't make any money for a long time in coaching," he said. "You took the jobs that you could barely get by on, but I didn't think twice about it. I didn't grow up with a lot of money or anything like that, so I really enjoyed it."

Barrow added, "It wasn't like he was seeking out glory or anything like that. Brian got into coaching to develop young men and because he loved the game. So many of his coaches influenced him. Brian grinded it out for a lot of years, and I remember hearing people at some of the other schools talk about nobody works as hard as Brian. That guy's up early in the morning before sunrise watching film. Nobody watched as much film as Coach Newberry, and that was a common sentiment before he got to the Naval Academy."

Over the next two decades, Newberry bounced around from Washington & Lee (DC/DB) to Lehigh (assistant DB) and back to Washington & Lee (DC/DB) before going to Elon (DB), Sewanee (DC/LB), Northern Michigan (DC) and Kennesaw State (DC/DB).

"I made the most of it and enjoyed my time. I was around really, really good people at every stop," he said. "I saw the good side of coaching and the bad side of it. I coached on both sides of the ball and wore a lot of different hats. I was the strength and conditioning coach and the recruiting coordinator, coached on offense and defense and coached different positions. I needed that path to follow and to come up the hard way and learn those lessons."

Newberry continued, "I think it gives you such a different viewpoint. When you end up where I am now, you can relate to everybody on your staff, what they're doing, how important it is and the steps and processes you go through. It was instrumental in me becoming the coach and the person I am to go through all of that. I was never unhappy. I never complained about the money or lack of it. I just did my job, loved where I was and enjoyed all of my steps."

Over the years, Newberry has remained in contact with Teaff, one of his biggest mentors and one of the men who helped him pursue a career in coaching.

"I remember the culture that he built, and I just have a ton of respect for the person that he was outside of the coach and how he treated his players," Newberry said. "Everything he did, he made better and is just a phenomenal human. He was a historian; he wrote books. I love that he's a super well-rounded guy. It wasn't just all about football for him. It was about his faith and other interests outside of football, and I pride myself in those same things."

One of Teaff's existing messages that Newberry tries to instill into his own coaching philosophy is how to treat his players.

"That trust that you build with your players is paramount," he said. "That's the first thing that has to happen before a young man will play hard for you."

From time to time, Newberry and his best friend, Barrow, would spend the day with Teaff at his house near Lake Belton after their playing careers were finished, doing whatever work around the property was needed.

"We're at his house, and he's mixing concrete. He had this really old truck that ran on propane, which is unheard of," Newberry jokingly remembered. "He's just the salt of the earth."

Barrow added, "It wasn't like it was just us working. Sometimes, Coach Teaff was right there with us. We were in the best shape of our lives, but we had a hard time keeping up with Coach Teaff's work. Those were really memorable times being out there with him. Coach Teaff is not just a guy who talks the talk; he walks the walk. Seeing him up close like that outside of football was something special."

In 2019, Newberry's years of climbing the coaching ladder and hard work paid off when he was hired to one of his dream jobs as the Naval Academy's defensive coordinator. Although initially an outsider to the service academies, Newberry spent the next four seasons understanding the inner workings of being at a special program like Navy before ultimately taking over as head coach before the 2023 season.

"You're typically coaching a really smart kid that wants to serve his country, which makes these guys unique. We recruit nationally and get some of the best and brightest young men in the country. It's a lot of fun to coach them," Newberry said.

"The things that we pride ourselves on here at the Naval Academy because we're not going to be as talented as most of the teams we line up against are the intangibles. We talk about being elite with our effort, attitude and toughness. We want to play harder than anybody in the country. We want to be tougher than anybody in the country. We want to be the most disciplined team on the field every week."

His friends and former coaches have enjoyed watching his ascension through the ranks, and they believe it couldn't have happened to someone more deserving than Newberry.

"Brian is a great guy, and he's got an incredible heart. He's extremely kind but extremely tough; he's the kind of guy that you are glad is in the coaching profession developing young men," Barrow said "It's been incredible to see him progress to something on a national stage and win arguably the biggest rivalry in college football. Watching him progress into the position that he is in now, that the good Lord has given him, has been pretty special, and he certainly deserves it."

Reedy noted, "I can't say that 30 years ago I would have said, 'Brian Newberry is going to be a great college football coach.' But by looking back, I can say, 'Here's a guy that did all of the right things.' Even though he was injured and didn't have the kind of career he wanted from a playing standpoint, he had a great attitude every day and came to work every day. When you reflect back on that, you can then see how he'd be a great football coach."

With over 25 years of playing and coaching experience under his belt and roughly 10 stops along the way, Newberry is molding the Navy program into his vision, emphasizing many of the same things he learned while playing at Baylor.

"To be the best version of yourself is what I've tried to pride myself in as a coach and pass that along to my players and make it more about the work and the process," Newberry said. "The joy is in the journey, not necessarily the outcome. We try to focus on the task at hand and in the day-to-day. We have the 1-0 mantra around here, and it's basically win the day, win the moment and the outcome takes care of itself. The byproduct of doing those things is winning. You don't always get that, but you want to put yourself in a position where you deserve it, whether you get it or not."