After four years as a graduate assistant coach for the titans of collegiate football, Mike Briglin ’02 is trading Clemson orange to take on a new role, this time as safeties coach for Abilene Christian University in Texas, home of the Wildcats.
Mike joins the ACU staff after four seasons at Clemson as a graduate assistant coach. During his four-year tenure at Clemson, the statistics are epic: Clemson recorded a 55-4 record, tied for the most wins in a four-year span in major college football history, and collected four ACC titles and two national championships.
“Championships are always great but I promise you the real win for me are the bonds I have with the coaches and the players,” Mike said. “It is a bond for a lifetime. That’s what I’m going to remember the most: We made history together. Pinch me, I’m a part of that.”
Mike said his faith in God will play a fundamental role in his new coaching job at ACU - and that the culture of ACU and its football program is one that thrives with the collective faith-based backbone of its staff and players.
According to Mike, the idea of pursuing a career in sports started when he worked at a residential boys’ home in Central New York following his graduation from SUNY Oswego with a degree in sociology. The children in the home had come from very difficult family situations.
“All the kids wanted to do something fun,” said Mike, a 1991 graduate of Oswego High School who was a running back and linebacker, as well as an Oswego State rugby player and a member of the U.S. Army rugby team while he served in the military, from 1991 to 1996.
“I told those boys that if they did what was asked of them, like chores, I’d take them outside to play football in the rain,” he said.
Mike taught the residential home boys the basics: how to catch, throw and tackle. One day, one of the boys told him he ought to be a Super Bowl coach.
“It was the first time I thought, ‘Hey, I could coach,’” Mike said. He’d been working hard to give the kids hope and a reason to believe in themselves and to teach them that “when nobody is there for you -- you still have yourself to believe in.”
It was the seed of an idea that carried Mike - who served in the Army as an engineer stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and in Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti -- through a move to Hawaii in 2004 to work for the Department of Defense’s family advocacy program. There, he began coaching at the high school level.
“It was through coaching that I realized I can impact young people’s lives more than I am able to through social work,” he said.
At Clemson, he earned a master's degree in youth development leadership and a second master's in athletic leadership. His goals, he said, are to become a defensive coordinator and a head coach someday.
“I know that God has me going in that direction,” he said. “There is a way to create happiness and hope, and it comes from faith in God and from being a good person.”
Mike’s impact on youth - from the children living in the residential home through to the college players he’s coaching - is exactly where he’s meant to be.
Mike, who has served as a guest lecturer in classrooms at Clemson, will return home to Central New York in June to speak to the community about overcoming adversity and how to live in joy.
“Not everyone’s path is a righteous one,” he said. “All of us have a different mission in life. Whatever your calling is, that’s your calling, And whatever you’re going to do - don’t let anyone get in your way.”