https://theathletic.com/1820787/2020/05 ... e-packers/
The Athletic wrote:‘I refuse to accept failure’: Reggie Begelton’s remarkable road to the Packers
Matt Schneidman
Every weekday for seven months, Reggie Begelton woke up at 5 a.m. Work started at 8, but he arrived two hours early.
This was 2016, Begelton was 22 years old and fresh off a career at Lamar University during which he went from a two-year walk-on to the best wide receiver in school history. He still holds program records for receptions (227) and receiving yards (2,435), while ranking second in touchdown catches (20).
Yet, Begelton’s commute wasn’t to any team’s facility or any type of gym.
Before the sun rose, Reggie did. He drove from his house in Beaumont, Texas, to his job as a junior broker at Universal Coin and Bullion, a gold, silver and rare coin investment firm.
For 10 hours per day, five days a week, he tried to sell strangers something they had no interest in buying. At times, with all the denials and curse words launched his way, Begelton felt worthless.
At that point, despite an offer from the Canadian Football League’s Calgary Stampeders, he had retired before his professional football career even began.
“He didn’t want to get into football no more,” said his father Reginald Begelton. “He just gave it up.”
At 6 foot 2 and 200 pounds, Begelton caught everything on the football field.
“Goes and gets some balls that some other people can’t go get,” said Ray Woodard, Begelton’s head coach at Lamar.
He tried out for the Falcons and Raiders after starring in college, but neither team offered. The Stampeders did, but he didn’t want to risk his body for such a minuscule paycheck. As his once-promising football career floundered, he entered the real world.
“That put me in a depression. It really did,” Begelton said. “Growing up as a kid, all you want is that opportunity.
“And I didn’t get it.”
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Begelton was only 7 years old when his uncle was murdered while babysitting him.
He looked up to Uncle Ervin, a football player himself and his mom’s only sibling who was affectionately known as “E-Sweet.” E-Sweet was only 20 when he was shot dead.
“He went to do a favor for a friend and the favor turned into a robbery,” said Miranda Johnson, Begelton’s mother. “All my brother saw was these two girls being in a situation that was gonna harm them. … The person who shot him had the gun on one of the girls. She was in the backseat. And so when he came back to the car trying to get out of the area, the guy … told him, ‘You move this car and I’ll shoot you.’ And so he was like, ‘Well that’s what you’re gonna have to do because we’re out of here.’
“He shot him in the back and the bullet went through his chest. In my brother’s mind, he’s like, ‘I gotta get these girls out of here.’ He drove quite a ways to get them out to an area where they could be safe and he passed away then.”
Added Begelton, who has “E-Sweet” tattooed on the outside of his left bicep on a cross with angel wings surrounding it: “He just put himself in a bad position. And I’m kinda using his story as what not to do.”
After that night 19 years ago, Begelton vowed to stay out of trouble and protect his sister, who was 1 year old at the time (he has “My Sister’s Keeper” tattoo on the inside of his left bicep surrounded by a dove, rose and water droplets).
Johnson called her son “the perfect teenager” growing up. His grades were impeccable and his athletic abilities promising. He was humble and likable, choosing to fish over most everything else.
As a senior, Begelton was named team captain at West Brook High School and received first-team All-District honors after catching 52 passes for 866 yards and nine touchdowns. Yet, no college scholarship offers arrived, so he walked on at his hometown college Lamar, which formed a football team in 2010 for the first time since disbanding 21 years ago.
Begelton saw no future in football, so he majored in chemical engineering. Beaumont and its surrounding towns are littered with chemical plants, and Begelton knew he could make six figures right out of college.
At the time, his confidence in athletics was low, his frail 5-foot-11 frame unimposing, and despite his excitement to play for his hometown school, Begelton knew there was a reason he wasn’t on scholarship.
“I didn’t even think about going pro or anything like that,” Begelton said. “ … I just didn’t see it happening. I was a realist. I am a realist and I understand percentages, especially coming from a startup program and everything like that.
“That was gonna be the peak of my career.”
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Before his first semester of college in 2011, Begelton had never truly faced adversity.
Then it all hit at once.
Swamped by chemical engineering classes as a freshman redshirt, he almost flunked out. His grandfather, “the rock of the family,” passed away in October. Around the start of 2012, his parents filed for divorce. At the same time, Begelton was going through a “bad breakup” himself.
“For an 18-year-old, that’s a lot,” Begelton said. “… That’s when I started developing in my mind that no matter what, I’m not gonna let the elements define who I am.”
Begelton endured a stormy first year before starting eight games as a redshirt freshman in 2012, catching 21 passes for 172 yards. Begelton’s father paid for his tuition and books, but after two years of doing so, he could no longer afford to.
“Son, we have to make a decision,” Reginald said. “Either you go to the coach’s office and see if you can get on scholarship or you have to stop playing football altogether.”
Begelton begged his head coach for money. Woodard knew he’d lose Begelton if he didn’t oblige, so he offered a half scholarship since Begelton had cracked the two-deep depth chart by the end of his redshirt freshman season.
A team-high 82 catches for 858 yards and eight touchdowns in 2013 earned him a full scholarship. Sixty-seven more catches for 860 yards and six touchdowns in 2014. In 2015, even with Lamar’s top three quarterbacks suffering a torn ACL, broken wrist and torn labrum in the season’s first four games, Begelton still caught 56 passes for 542 yards and five touchdowns in a run-first offense.
The Raiders called Begelton during the 2016 NFL Draft and expressed interest in selecting him. Then they called him a second time and said, while they weren’t drafting him, they’d consider signing him as a priority free agent. Then called a third time and said, while they weren’t signing him as a priority free agent, they’d invite him to a rookie tryout.
But first, Begelton tried out for the Falcons. “I honestly crapped my pants,” he said. “I didn’t do well at all. I don’t blame them for not signing me. The pressure got to me.”
He performed much better for the Raiders, but they still didn’t offer.
His only offer came from the Stampeders, but Begelton declined.
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Forest Hamilton, an assistant director at Universal Coin and Bullion, had heard of Begelton through former teammates who worked for him.
His interest piqued when Begelton approached his table at Lamar’s job fair.
“What are you doing now?” Hamilton asked.
“Man, nothing,” Begelton responded, visibly dejected.
“You could tell he was down,” Hamilton said. “When these athletes are done, they’re broken, a lot of them. They’ve built the majority of their self-worth and their self-esteem into sports. They’re so used to people cheering for them and them being the best at their schools their whole careers and then it’s just over.
“There’s this depression that can kick in. And I could see it on him. You could see there was still a fire burning, but he was so disappointed.”
Begelton knew nothing about sales, but Hamilton convinced him to take a job as a junior broker because Begelton had nothing else.
“The best decision of my life,” Begelton now calls it.
Begelton arrived at 6 a.m. for two hours of “mental training.” Hamilton held a workshop dubbed “The Breakfast Club,” during which his employees, some of which, like Begelton, encountered disheartening rejections daily, learned how to face their insecurities and solve problems.
After Begelton graduated from Lamar, he was invited to speak to the football team’s incoming freshmen. He “chickened out” because he feared speaking to a group. Hamilton’s mental training taught Begelton to be comfortable sharing his voice publicly.
Begelton first despised waking up at 5 a.m., but mental training taught him to turn on music after waking up, inscribe motivational messages on his bathroom mirror and write down the specific Chevy truck he wanted to purchase.
“Getting up in the morning ended up being easy,” Begelton said.
With “The Breakfast Club,” Begelton combated his insecurity of talking to strangers over the phone. He learned to begin every call asking where they were from and what the weather was like there, simple questions intended to keep them engaged long enough for Begelton to pitch gold and silver investments.
If he made 200 calls in a day, he’d be lucky to make one sale. Most days, every call ended in rejection.
“You got the one where you get hung up in your face,” Begelton said. “You got the one where you get cussed out and hung up in your face. You have the one where people they have you talk, just put you on speakerphone and make you feel like you’re embarrassing yourself. You feel like you have the worst job in the world.
“I realized that if I wanna make strides in my life, man, I gotta do something I’m not comfortable with.”
Begelton showed promise in his seven months as a junior broker, but those close to him kept asking why, at only 22, he had abandoned football. They insisted he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t at least pursue the game he loved one more time.
After playing together on a company flag football team, and seeing what Begelton had left, Hamilton sat him down.
“We can’t do this,” Hamilton said. “You can’t have all this left in the tank.”
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After deciding to give football another shot, he trained in Houston, a near-three-hour round trip from his home. Calgary had offered him a contract after a March 2017 tryout, and this time he accepted. He had finally achieved his dream of playing professional football.
In his first preseason game after tallying almost 100 receiving yards in the third quarter alone, a defender hit him below the knee on the first play of the fourth quarter, partially tearing his MCL.
“Going through all of this and I finally get up there and I’m doing great,” Begelton said. “And I get low-cut.”
Begelton healed in time to play in nine of Calgary’s 18 games in 2017, catching 22 passes for 304 yards and a touchdown. He earned a starting spot in the 2018 preseason, only to have it stripped when the Stampeders signed former 49ers receiver Eric Rogers the day training camp ended.
“That put me behind, again. I was pissed,” Begelton said. “I’m not gonna lie to you. I was feeling some type of way … I had to find that will to keep going because I’m behind the 8-ball again.”
At yet another crossroads, Begelton this time chose to trudge forward. He was making 675 Canadian dollars per week, equivalent to a meager $479 in the U.S.
“I could make this at McDonald’s,” Begelton said. “ … I could’ve said F it.”
He didn’t, though, because he remembered those mornings he rose at 5 back in Beaumont and drove through traffic to sit through a two-hour workshop that taught him exactly how to not say F it.
Begelton’s chance came in early September when starting receiver Kamar Jorden tore his ACL. In his first start, he caught seven passes for 153 yards, and in his second, five passes for 150 yards and a touchdown.
In his third, he caught none because, while blocking a gunner on the first punt of the game, Begelton broke his right arm. His season was over.
“He could never just get a break,” his mother said. “ … Being a football mom and seeing him hurt just threw my heart out. It’s the scariest thing.”
Added Begelton: “Just think of how that felt for me. Finally got the opportunity and I was just taking off.”
By early January, he began training again, obsessed with strengthening his right arm to prove those two games weren’t a fluke. He drove almost two hours to Katy, Texas, and two hours back to Beaumont 3-4 times per week. He had tasted success on a football field for the first time in almost four years, and he may only get one more chance to attract NFL attention.
Begelton played in more games in 2019 (17) than in 2017 and ‘18 combined (16). With imposing speed and the hands to match, he finished second in the league with 102 catches, third with 1,444 receiving yards and tied for third with 10 touchdown catches. He was unanimously named Calgary’s team MVP and a CFL All-Star.
“You could kind of sense he felt it was a make or break year,” Stampeders head coach Dave Dickenson said.
Finally, after enduring tragedy, denial, depression, injury and seemingly every reason to give up football for good, Begelton was about to get his shot.
Said Dickenson: “He doesn’t take no for an answer well.”
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Begelton tried out for seven NFL teams over two weeks in December 2019. None signed him.
One tryout remained on New Year’s Eve in Green Bay.
“I went through all these workouts and I’m not getting any real positive feedback and I’m kind of panicking,” Begelton said. “I’m finally getting this opportunity and I’m not getting what I wanna hear, so you can only imagine what’s going through my head at this point that I’m heading to the Packers.”
The retirement, the return, the injuries, the resurgence: it boiled down to one day.
And he killed it.
“In my eyes, I had the best workout I could’ve ever had,” Begelton said. “The Packers straight up told me, ‘We love you and we’re gonna sign you.’
“To be honest with you, all I could do is smile. The emotions that were going through my body were overwhelming. Everything that I’ve gone through, I’m finally getting an opportunity.”
Added his father: “I cried and I whined.”
For almost 27 years, Begelton has never been to an NFL game. He wants his first to be the one he plays in.
“That pride is just so overwhelming because he’s this person who has been through so much,” his mother said. “ … I still get chills right now thinking about it.”
It’s no guarantee that he’ll play in a regular-season game, let alone a preseason one. He’s one of 10 wide receivers currently on the team, and one of only two who haven’t played in the NFL. But at least he has a chance, which is all he’s ever wanted.
“As far as Reggie Begelton goes, he had a tremendous amount of production in the CFL last year,” Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said. “We were able to bring him in, work him out and he just kind of fits a lot of the things we’re looking for.”
Just making it this far is a feat in itself for the kid whose role model was killed while babysitting him. The kid who endured personal pain as he almost flunked out of college. The kid who almost quit football because he couldn’t afford school. The kid who did quit football for a job selling gold and silver because he wasn’t good enough for the NFL. The kid who partially tore his MCL and broke his arm in back-to-back years.
“I believe that my story will influence so many people that are going through similar situations,” Begelton said. “I’m trying to inspire so many people that don’t have that mental training as I did.”
But just making it this far isn’t good enough for him.
“Do you know the difference between defeat and failure?” he asks. “You’re going to get defeated. You only fail when you stop trying.
“I refuse to accept failure.”
But I never voted so hard for a Viking to make the Pro Bowl.