'This has been a journey.' New Ohio State football RB coach Locklyn took a different path
Even now, Carlos Locklyn can’t talk about what he did in his former career.
Ohio State’s new running backs coach, who was hired away from Oregon during spring practice following the sudden departure of Tony Alford, hasn’t taken a typical coaching path.
Until five years ago, Locklyn’s primary job was in law enforcement in the Memphis, Tennessee, area. He started as a corrections officer and later joined the police.
“Then I got on special detail for the government,” Locklyn said.
Locklyn, 46, is a talkative man, but he wouldn't say anything about what that entailed.
“I did that for a long time,” Locklyn said.
His law enforcement career had scary moments. He was off duty one day when he encountered “just a bad situation” at his wife’s church. He said he had to shoot a suspect.
“Not proud of it, but it’s one of those things that happens,” Locklyn said. “My time as a law enforcement or correctional officer taught me how to deal with people. I’m from Montgomery (Alabama), but those people in the city of Memphis, they made coach Lock.”
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It was in Memphis that Locklyn realized he wanted to become a football coach. He’d been a star player at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He was a running back for three years and a defensive back for one.
“If you were to construct in your mind what a football player would look like, what that football player would consist of, that would be Carlos,” said Fernandus Vinson, a former Cincinnati Bengal who coached him on defense. “First one there. Last one to leave. First one to jump in to do a drill. He always wanted instruction. He always wanted to be coached.
“Pound for pound, that was the toughest son of a gun on that team. It drew the respect of his teammates because they saw it. There wasn’t anything fake about Carlos.”
Locklyn graduated with a degree in criminal justice. But even as he progressed in that career, the football itch never left.
“I enjoyed my career in law enforcement, but I knew I could reach more people by coaching,” he said.
He applied to Rhodes College, a local Division III school, but was told he needed experience at the high school level.
“I think God was telling me I was thinking too small,” Locklyn said.
Starting as a volunteer, he worked at four different Memphis high schools in eight years to gain that experience while juggling his other career. At times, he got discouraged and considered abandoning coaching. He credits a fellow assistant at Manassas High School, Edward Jacobs, for talking him out of it.
“He wasn’t like any other high school coach that I encountered, personality-wise,” Jacobs said. “There are a lot of good coaches here in Memphis, Tennessee, but there was just something about him that was different – the way kids gravitated toward him, the way he motivated, his enthusiasm, and the passion he poured into them.”
Jacobs told him that he should pursue a college coaching job. Locklyn sent a direct message on Twitter to University of Memphis strength coach Josh Storms asking if he could serve as a volunteer. Storms, who’s now at Florida State, gets similar requests frequently, but there was something about Locklyn that intrigued him.
He invited him to volunteer in the Tigers’ weight room, which Locklyn did.
“Talk about earning your way into the business the hard way,” Storms said. “He was still working overnights in law enforcement. He would show up in the morning fully kitted out in all his gear – bulletproof vest and the whole deal – and run in the bathroom and change and come back out in his sweats and jump right in with the group.”
Locklyn was – and remains – built like a weight-room junkie, but it wasn’t long before Storms realized that Locklyn’s real passion was working with running backs. Storms had him work closely with that position unit.
“Just because I didn’t have the title of running backs coach when I was in Memphis, I never carried myself that way,” Locklyn said. “I was carrying myself as a running backs coach. I approached every day that way.”
Fortunately for Locklyn, he was at Memphis when the Tigers’ staff had rising stars on it. Current Florida State coach Mike Norvell was the head coach, and now Oregon coach Dan Lanning and Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham were under him.
They took Locklyn under their wings as he rose from weight room assistant to offensive analyst to director of high school relations.
Norvell hired him at Florida State as director of high school relations before Locklyn got his first official assistant coaching job at Western Kentucky in 2021. When Lanning landed at Oregon the next year, he hired Locklyn.
“I’ve got so much respect for Dan Lanning for taking a chance on someone the people at Oregon saw as a nobody,” Locklyn said.
At Oregon, Locklyn's star running back was Bucky Irving, a Minnesota transfer who ran for 1,058 yards in 2022 and 1,180 last year. Tampa Bay drafted Irving in the fourth round last month.
He credits Locklyn for much of his success.
“I’m blessed,” Irving said. “For taking a chance on me out of the portal, I wouldn’t trade him for anybody.
Irving said Locklyn’s energy and his devotion to the running back position set him apart from other coaches he’s had.
“He’s a coach that’s going to keep it real at all costs,” he said. “He’s never going to sugarcoat things. That’s the type of coach that you need. He’s going to push you every day and be the same person every day on and off the field.
“You can come to him with any off-the-field concerns you have, but when you step on that field, we all knew it was business and we were going to go to war for him.”
Locklyn wasn’t looking to leave Oregon when Ohio State coach Ryan Day contacted him following Alford's departure. But he decided it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.
Locklyn will be coaching perhaps the best rushing duo in the country this fall with senior TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins, who was All-Southeastern Conference at Ole Miss.
“When you hear about Carlos and his story, it’s captivating,” Day said. “And then you start to listen to his overall knowledge of the position, his aggressiveness in recruiting, the impact he’s had on people, and it was an absolute slam dunk for us.”
Locklyn said he had to pinch himself that he was in Columbus. It’s been a rapid rise but hardly an overnight success.
“This has been a journey,” he said.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: New Ohio State RB coach Carlos Locklyn took a different path
