Middleton heads back to alma mater

BY TIMOTHY RAMSEY THE CHRONICLE

Playing in the NFL is the dream of almost every young football player. Doug Middleton has been living that dream since 2016. Now he is going back to the place that allowed him to make his NFL dreams a reality.

Middleton was recently hired as the special assistant to the Athletics Department at Appalachian State University. In this role, Middleton will assist all athletic programs with mental health programming, NIL (Name, Image and Likeness), fundraising and recruiting.

Middleton is not retiring from the NFL, but rather looks at it as an opportunity to pour into the young athletes at App State. with the knowledge, experience and guidance he has obtained over the years since he left the program.

“I wouldn’t say necessarily that I am retiring because things can still change from here, but I am taking a little break,” Middleton said. “It’s not a full-time role because I still got a lot of stuff going on, not only with the foundation, but I am opening up a wellness center in south Charlotte.

“It’s more of a consulting role where I go up a couple days a week and really help out and be around the building and help out our student-athletes in all of those roles. I am not necessarily done, but I will say football is on the back burner.”

App State and Middleton have been in discussions for several years about finding a role for him in the athletics department. His aim has always been to have an administrative role in an athletic department.

“We have been talking about this for the last two years, to be honest,” he said. “My goal has always been athletic administration. I want to be an AD (athletics director) sometime down the road, and I did an internship with UVA in 2020.

“I have always stayed closely connected with the AD. When we hired the last head coach, I sat in on that interview, so I have been very included in the process up to this point and I want to maintain that. I also want to get more involved in the program, so the feeling was mutual when football was not a priority anymore. This is the move I wanted to make.”

Mental health has been a top priority for Middleton since he lost his best friend to suicide in 2017. A few months later he started his foundation, Dream the Impossible, and immersed himself in the Winston-Salem community, especially concerning mental health in youth.

“Building off some of the things that I have done on the field and the philanthropic work we have done with Dream the Impossible, it definitely made sense for a partnership. I will speak to different teams about mental toughness, resilience and strength through adversity.

“We are also planning a lot of mental health programming throughout the season for our student-athletes. I do some sports performance coaching with our student athletes. The biggest thing I would say is being directly involved on a day-to-day basis with our student-athletes and being readily available to them.”

NIL is a big shift in college athletics. Now college players can earn money from their name, image and likeness, which opens up another can of worms for student-athletes to deal with. Having first hand experience of what it’s like to be a professional, Middleton can give these young men and women advice that only a professional can provide, which

Honorable Mention: E. Lincoln (10-0), Wake Forest (8-2), Mallard Creek (7-3), Chase (10-0), W. Henderson (10-0)