COACH LANGFORD
BY CALEB MCCOURRY
In September 2014, Tim Langford created a cross country course with a single lawn mower by himself. But it wasn’t a rider — it was a lawn mower the second-year South Carolina State track and field and cross country head coach used to cut his own yard with. Before it was made, Bulldog athletes trained with road runs and sometimes got permission to run on local golf courses. Determined to make a course his athletes could not only train on but host meets on as well, Langford put the mower in his trunk, drove to a plot of land 3 miles from the school’s campus in Orangeburg and mowed five hours a day for a week. The course is 5 miles. South Carolina State, which shared meet locations with other local schools, didn’t have the funding to make a new course. When Langford told Paul Bryant what he had planned, his athletic director didn’t believe it until Langford brought him to his new creation. “It was the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen,” said Bryant, who is now the athletic director at Edward Waters College. “That’s when I knew he was passionate about what he did.” This story of Langford doing anything to improve his team is just one of many in his coaching career that spans two decades. From a humble beginning, Langford is now the head coach of Oklahoma’s track and field and cross country program after getting the interim tag lifted in May 2020. While spending one year as OU’s interim head coach after the departure of Jim VanHootegem, Langford had four NCAA indoor qualifiers and two individual Big 12 titles — senior Jackson Webb in the 60-meter dash and freshman Lavinja Jurgens at high jump. And he’s currently OU’s only Black head coach, the first since former OU basketball head coach Jeff Capel’s departure in 2011, and the fourth Black head coach at OU ever — a feat Langford does not take lightly. Coming from South Carolina State, a historically Black university that lacks the funding or resources of a Power 5 school such as Oklahoma, Langford now has the power to not just build on a bigger program, but create a new culture of inclusion in NCAA coaching, which is a predominantly white career path. As of March, out of 6,406 coaches, there are 554 Black Division I coaches of non-historically Black colleges and universities in the country, per a study from the NCAA. To Langford, being hired by Oklahoma can serve as an example to athletic directors and all other aspiring coaches of what’s possible in college athletics. “If you look at the makeup of collegiate coaching and how many African Americans are in head coaching positions and at head coaching positions in Power Five institutions, it’s not a large
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percentage,” Langford said. “And I truly feel that it’s my job, it’s my place to show that it can work, that we can have food at the table. We can do leadership, not just with other African Americans, but with all demographics. … Every demographic will respect you if you’re doing it, if you prove that you do it, and I don’t take it lightly that I’ve been granted the opportunity.” “It urges me,” said the coach who once cut a path where none existed, “to do such a good job that another institution models their program after what we do.”
‘I REALLY STARTED BETTING ON MYSELF IN EVERY SITUATION’ Langford understands perfectly why track and field and cross country is his calling. In the competitive sport, grueling training and conditioning pushes athletes to not only compete against the best, but to simply be better. “I stand on the line, there’s no play to call. It’s just me versus you,” Langford said. “It’s simply, ‘I’m better than you, and I’m going to prove it right here.’” But as a young kid, Langford had hoop dreams. In his neighborhood in Lynchburg, Virginia, he and his friends were playing basketball all through their younger years. It wasn’t until middle school that he began running track as a way to stay in shape. As he got older, he began competing in high jump at Heritage High School, something that he found success at. “Naturally,” Langford said, “you want to do what you’re what you’re gifted at. So, I got bitten by the track and field bug and never looked back.” So, in 1996 when Langford went to nearby Radford University, he wanted to walk on to the track and field team. However, there wasn’t a varsity indoor track team yet. It was a club, still being put together by then-head coach Al Barnes. It wouldn’t be an official team until after the 1997 season. As Barnes remembers it, meeting Langford was completely circumstantial. Barnes’ office was in one of the residence halls on campus and just outside of it was a piano. One day in 1997, Barnes was trying to work while Langford was outside playing it. “ I walked o u t and just
OU’s first-year coach Tim Lang�ord pushes through adversity, delivers success sort of went up to him and said, ‘Hey, do you mind going to the other residence hall?’” Barnes said. “I had a track shirt on, and he turned around, and we started talking about track, and he mentioned he’d like to be involved. And I was looking for walk-ons to start a program anyway, and it went from there.” Langford was the first official track athlete to join, and Barnes helped him land his first college coaching job. The two remain close to this day. From 1997 to 2000, Langford competed in high jump, triple jump, long jump, 100- and 400-meter relays for Barnes. In 1998, he became the first Big South conference champion in the school’s history in any event for high jump. He won it again the next year, but his first win is what Langford said changed his outlook on his mindset of the sport. “My coach walked over to me and said, ‘You’re the first conference champion in school history. Congratulations.’ And the rest of the meet was over. And my small team — almost ragtag in comparison to every other team because we were just starting so our numbers were low — everybody celebrated. We rushed the high jump mat, and it was like one of the biggest accomplishments in my life. “But at that point, I knew I could be successful. … That’s when I really started betting on myself in every situation.”
‘A HECK OF A COACH’ Langford first started thinking a b o u t coaching when he was in college, but his love of helping y o u n g p e o p l e came when he was one himself. As his mother, Mary Langford, describes it, his home i n
COURTESY OF OU ATHLETICS
