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Life was good for Micheal Barrow - fame and fortune in the nation’s premier sport, the NFL.
But life was not so good away from the spotlight.
“I gave my life to Christ in college in 1988,” said Barrow, a linebacker on two national champion teams at the University of Miami and a first-team All-American in 1992. “But from 1988 to ‘98 it was just a roller coaster ride. It was more about do’s and don’ts and me testing God. I looked at it like football was my god. I was just serving that.”
He was drafted in the second round in 1993 by the Houston Oilers. Soon he became known as Media Mike as he appeared on two television shows a week. In 1997 he was traded to the Carolina Panthers and the roller coaster became steeper.
“I went to the Panthers as the highest paid linebacker in the NFL,” Barrow said in a recent phone interview. “I had everything that I needed in the world to be happy.
“I had the fame, I had the fortune, I was part of Carolina’s defense where if you were a linebacker at that time you were considered a star. Team-wise they were one game away from going to the Super Bowl, losing to Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers.
“But the year was hell. I was a public success but privately I was in despair, like everything that I valued was being tested.”
When he arrived the Panthers moved him from middle linebacker to outside on the left. “Athletically I knew I could do it, but mentally I didn’t know the techniques,” Barrow said. “I struggled and I led the team with 8 and a half sacks, but I missed 8 or 10.
“The newspapers would say he had 10 tackles and 2 assists but ... There was always a `but.' That killed me because it had never happened to me before.
“My brother was living with me and our parents were getting a divorce. He was falling through the cracks so I had him come live with me.
“I was valuing things more than God. Before that season I was broken, depressed and what not. I somehow made it through the season.”
Part of Barrow’s pre-game ritual was to read the Panthers’ game program in the locker room. One story he read was about a former cheerleader for the Panthers.
“It said she was a Christian,” Barrow recalled. “I said `That’s what I need, I need a good Christian girl in my life.'"
A few days before the final home game of the season, he was at a restaurant “and this girl walked up and I looked and I looked. `Wow, she’s drop dead gorgeous! Oh my God! That’s the Christian girl, that’s her!'”
Barrow asked her if he could buy her a drink.
“I don’t drink,” she said.
So they sat and talked for awhile, and Barrow mentioned he had arranged through his former coach at Homestead High school, Bobby McCray, for 60 kids to come up for the game through a program called 500 Role Models.
He suggested they collaborate and hold a program like comedian/humanitarian Jerry Lewis did in those days called Jerry’s Kids.
“She said let’s have a business lunch. We got together Dec. 22, met for lunch and spent three hours together, the next day half a day together. She invited me to church, on a Friday. It was no bigger than one of my linebacker meeting rooms.
“God used her as the bait to get me back in the church. By the end of the service I was crying, I was at the alter praying. God used her to change my life.
“From that point on I was just on fire for God. They used to call me John the Baptist because I was leading people to the Lord. That girl, Shelley, ended up becoming my wife. We got married 13 months after we met.”
Barrow played for the Panthers through the 1999 season, then for the New York Giants from 2000-03 and finished his career with the Dallas Cowboys in 2005.
In 2006 Barrow became assistant head coach at Homestead High School and in 2007 Randy Shannon hired him to be the Hurricanes’ linebacker coach and special teams coordinator. He was retained by Al Golden in 2010 and remained on the staff through 2014, then moved on to be the linebackers coach with the Seattle Seahawks from 2015-17.
Barrow, who has been inducted into the UM Sports Hall of Fame, majored in accounting and business administration at UM. He became a very visible team leader and community supporter after Hurricane Andrew ravaged his home town of Homestead in August, 1992. The campus was shutdown for several weeks and pre-season practice was moved 100 miles north to Dodgertown at Vero Beach.
Barrow went on to earn Big East Defensive Player of the Year honors that season as the Canes came within one game of repeating as national champions.
Now he’s 50, an ordained minister, and he and Shelley have four children and live in Charlotte.
Does he go by the title Reverend Barrow?
“Call me Mike,” he replied.
His ministry is not at a brick and mortar building but is conducted through the internet and social media. Watch his prayer ministries and passionate messages on YouTube and Facebook and he won’t be wearing a suit and tie, rather a T-shirt and ball cap, with Shelley at his side participating in prayers and Bible readings.
Barrow and former UM linebacker Kevin Lewis are hosts of “Sideline 2 Baseline with MB and KLEW” on YouTube and Facebook, And in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mike and Shelley are hosts to online prayer services on Saturday and Sunday mornings, “praying for families, friends, the sick and those who are in need. We felt God was telling us to do it.”
Barrow said the “Sideline 2 Baseline” programs started out with guests from former arch rival Florida State, including players such as Dexter Carter and Sammy Smith.
“We did a show with UM with coach Howard Schnellenberger and the 1983 national champion team,” Barrow said. “We had 15 University of Florida guys including Lomas Brown, Kerwin Bell, and Shane Matthews, and the 2000 New York Giants with Sean Payton and John Fox, the coordinators on that team, and former teammates like Tiki Barber. Also Pete Carroll and the USC Trojans with Carson Palmer and 10 to 12 guys. And again with UM with Jonathan Vilma and Curtis Johnson.
“We also did a forum on how to improve black mobility from the sidelines to the front office in professional sports, with Bill Polian (NFL executive and general manager Buffalo Bills the four years they went to Super Bowl), NFL Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy, Mr. October Reggie Jackson, Pat Williams, the general manager of the Orlando Magic, Marc Trestman, head coach Bears (and quarterbacks coach at UM under Schnellenberger). Recently we had former FSU quarterback Charlie Ward and honored him.”
Last December Barrow was the keynote speaker at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes of South Florida Orange Bowl Prayer Breakfast at Jungle Island in Miami.
When we did our phone interview for this article, Barrow was in Columbus, Ohio.
“I’m at the home of my mother in love,” he said. “I call her mother in love, not law.”