MOBILE, Ala. – "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." - Mark Twain

As the 2018 University of South Alabama football season winds down, there is one senior who will be honored prior to kickoff of Friday's game against Coastal Carolina who is the living embodiment of that quote credited to one of the iconic authors of American literature.  It's something he has been faced with for as long as he can remember, and instead of treating it as an impediment he uses it as motivation to succeed.

"That is something that I have definitely always had to deal with," explains Bull Barge, one of 19 members of the program set to be recognized before to his final game as a Jaguar.  "A lot of guys would tell me, if I were just 6-feet — or even 5-foot-11 — I'd be the best linebacker in the country.  In my head, I am asking why does my size mean I'm not the best?  That's why every week when we play somebody who has bigger guys their first reaction when they see me is, 'Oh, we have a little guy.'  Once the game starts you can see their opinion of me change as we go on and on, they go from saying that I'm too little to 'Hey, you're pretty good.'  That's what I've had to deal with for a long time now, but it's a spark, it helps me come fired up every day because I know I can play just as well as the guy who is 6-foot-2 or 6-foot-3.

"A lot of times when that ball is snapped it really doesn't matter, but I have seen there are a lot of things I can do that a taller guy can't.  When I dip under a lineman it's harder for them to get down to my level because someone who is 6-foot-2 is at my height when they bend down.  When I bend down I'm almost touching the ground, it makes it harder for the taller guys to get me so I use it to my advantage; when the play is outside and the guy cuts me off, I can get under him so fast they can't touch me and I'm still running in a straight line."

It's that approach to being considered an undersized linebacker that will help Barge depart as one of the school's all-time leading tacklers, having made 241 stops over the last four seasons.  He's grown from a lightly recruited high school star to an honorable mention all-Sun Belt Conference selection a year ago, and with 74 tackles — including four games with at least 10 this fall — he is second on the team in head coach Steve Campbell's first season in charge of the program.

Once himself considered undersized at his position — he was a center at both Southeastern Louisiana and Troy, helping the latter to an NCAA Division II championship in 1987 — Campbell can certainly appreciate what Barge has faced over the years.

"Bull has been a great player," he says.  "Whenever you are what some people will say is undersized, you have to play with your heart and your head and Bull has definitely done that.  He leaves it all out there on the field.  He makes up for any perceived shortcoming in height by how hard he plays and the passion that he plays with.  I can definitely appreciate that, and whether you were an undersized guy yourself or not that's easy to recognize.

"I don't want to say Bull is an overachiever because he is just an achiever who has done a lot of good stuff.  We're very glad to have him."

First-year defensive coordinator Greg Stewart, who also coaches Jaguar linebackers, appreciates what Barge has meant to the team this fall also.

"Bull is awesome," he says.  "When we're in meetings together he's like another coach in the room; he sees things that I don't see sometimes.  He's a great leader for the team and a pleasure to coach.  He's had a good year, he's made some plays."


Playing the game as a child, it's about having fun with your friends no matter your size or what position you play.  But as one progresses and the possibilities of a college scholarship loom, suddenly size matters to coaches when they are recruiting.

But even when he was younger, Barge would hear the comments about his lack of stature.

"I actually heard that a lot," he recalls.  "I remember one of my close friends in high school was committed to Arkansas, so one day Bret Bielema came down to Colquitt County to talk to him.  My coach called me out of class and the first thing he [Bielema] said was he wanted to see how tall I was.  He left after that, so I'm guessing I wasn't the right height.

"Before my senior year of high school I was tired of it.  I had 196 tackles my junior year, in my head I thought I should being having offers rolling in, you don't see too many guys doing this.  My senior year I was around the right people, they all told me to block it out so I just continued to play hard every day and by the end of the year I had four [NCAA] Division I offers.  I wasn't worried about the noise any more, I was happy to be attempting to play at this level at that point."

As a freshman at Colquitt County High, Barge's defensive coordinator was Travis Pearson.  Before his junior year, Pearson left to become an assistant at South, and eventually the Jaguar coaching staff extended a scholarship offer to the now 5-foot-10, 225-pound Moultrie, Ga., native.  The prior relationship helped, but it wasn't the only reason Barge decided to accept after making another 185 tackles for a Packer team that would go 15-0 and win the state AAAAAA title.

"When I was offered I was thankful Coach Pearson was here, but South Alabama was the first school to believe I wasn't too short," he says.  "That gave me a different perspective of South compared to the other schools, because they were the first to give me a Division I-A offer so I didn't care who was on the coaching staff because I was blessed to get this opportunity.  I was ready to be a Jaguar."

Once he arrived on campus, the size comments didn't stop.  Although a lot of it was teasing the freshman, he had already learned how to handle the situation.  "Once I got here I just blocked it out," Barge says.  "All my teammates would call me short or little, but when you talk to them on a serious note they'll let you know that I may be short but I'm going to bring it as if I was the same size as them.

"At one point it got a little irritating, but I never really fed into it.  I just accepted who I was and where I could go."

And if adjusting to the collegiate level isn't hard enough, Barge knew that his prior relationship with Pearson might make things difficult for him in the linebacker room.  So he set out to prove his worth on the practice field.

"I knew Coach Pearson was a little rowdy so I expected everyone to be on me because they felt that I was his son," he says.  "I knew it was going to be a little tougher for me because he didn't accept anything below average, and I didn't want to be below average so every day I came to work.  Coming out of the first camp I felt great because I was working with the twos, and then in my first game I played one snap.  But it was one snap, one tackle, so even though it was just that snap they could see I could tackle.  The next game was at Nebraska and I played 30-40 snaps and I had seven tackles so I felt like I was showing the coaches that I could play at this level as a freshman."

Although he had worked himself into the rotation immediately, Barge found that his attempt to compensate for his lack of size actually proved to be a hindrance.  It actually turned into a blessing as he figured out what he truly needed to do to be an impact player at the collegiate level.

"When I came here I wanted to be so big, I thought I had to do that to play at this level," he explains.  "But I realized I had gained too much weight, after the first few games I was getting tired even though in high school I played every snap and never got tired.  That's when I figured out I needed to drop some weight and it was going to be about learning the game.  Physicality and speed is natural, but to be a good football player you have to know the game.  That's when I started watching more film, hanging out with the older guys, listening to them and seeing how they digested plays and what made them do things the coaches didn't tell them to do that allowed them to make a play.

"It was about getting smarter so I could be better on the field."

Barge ended his freshman season with 36 tackles, then tacked on 54 more the next season while helping the Jaguars earn an invitation to the NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl.  Last year he was credited with 77 stops, and was also named the Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Week after making 13 tackles in a Senior Day victory over Arkansas State before earning recognition at the end of the season.


His path to this day — as well as the story of his nickname — began when he first played the sport as a six-year old in Moultrie, a small south Georgia town with a population of less than 15,000 approximately an hour from Tallahassee, Fla.

"When I was young all we did was play football," he recalls.  "My mom used to have to tell us to come inside because it was dark and we were trying to find somewhere with light where we could continue our game.  Football was the game, and in my neighborhood growing up — it was called Oak Circle — you had nothing but athletes.  In every other house you had somebody who played football, basketball or some other sport, so every day once you got one person outside everybody was trying to hurry up and get out there to play something.  A lot of guys had older brothers who played for the high school team, when we saw them playing I said 'I have to play football.'"

Which he did, while also participating in basketball and track.  But even then he knew that football was what he was passionate about.

"In sixth grade I didn't make the basketball team, but I wasn't mad about it," says Barge.  "The next year I did make the team and we were pretty good, we went to conference championship game, but you could tell it wasn't the same playing basketball or running track.  Back then we would play on Wednesday, and when you had a football game it was different than if you had a basketball game or a track meet."

It was well before then, however, that Barge — whose given name is De'Themeyus — earned the nickname that he still goes by.

"I started playing when I was six years, and by the time I was seven people had started calling me 'Bulldog' or 'Bulldozer,'" he explains.  "Everyone wanted to put the 'Bull' in there, and at the end of that seven-year-old season I was playing all-stars and I hit an opponent hard and someone yelled 'There you go Bull!'

"From that day on, I was Bull."

To all but one person, that is — his mother, Brenda.

"Until I got to college, she didn't call me Bull, my nickname for my mama was 'Poo Poo.'  I was young 'Poo' because I was the baby," Barge laughs.  "I was given the young name, but I was the person out there tackling everybody and making all the noise.  I was bigger than my cousins — who were 12 and 14 when I was eight years old — but I got the name 'Poo Poo.'  I was getting to big so she would call me that only at home."


That was then, but now Barge is focused on staying in the game he has loved all his life as he prepares to finish his collegiate career and earn a degree from South.

"I love football, my plan right now — at least for the next few months — is to give it a shot," he says.  "Hopefully someone will take a chance on me, but I am going to work hard at it; I am going to be in shape at Pro Day.  But I am also working to finish my degree in May, so if it doesn't work out I am going to take the coaching route."

Going into coaching wasn't something that he considered until recently.  "I realized it this year more than at any other point," says Barge.  "As the only senior in the linebacker room, a lot of time the coaches will give me the floor and let me teach the young guys what I see on the field and how I make some of the plays that I do; it's just like when I looked up to the older guys.  They will tell me that what I showed them simplified things for them, that showed me that I can help these guys out.  I know what I'm doing and I love this game, I fell that I can be very helpful.

"In a perfect world I will take it all the way to the NFL, but my mind-set is that wherever I can show that I can be good at this doesn't matter.  My high school coach has changed so many people's lives by helping them get the opportunity to go to college.  His main thing is to better yourself, do good in the classroom and on the field so you can be a better person later on in life; earn that scholarship so when you get it you can work hard and get away from Moultrie.  There is nothing wrong with living in Moultrie, Ga., but we all know there is more out in the world than just staying there.  Mobile was a huge city coming from where I did.  He instilled in us that there is more to the world than just staying at home.

"I saw how impactful he could be, I know I can help a lot of people."

It's a role that Stewart can easily see Barge playing.  "He communicates well, and he's loud," he says.  "But he is to the point, he knows when to cut up and when to be serious. He's a good young man, I'm proud and honored to have coached him."

Off the field, Barge still can't take his mind off the game — "I think about football.  I watch football," is what he claims to enjoy in his free time — but he also tries to enjoy time with family and friends, whether it is sons Draydyn, 4, and Bryson, 1, or teammates Nigel Lawrence and Tyree Turner.

"I have two little boys, when they are not here I call them," says Barge.  "When I am around them, it's wherever daddy goes they go.  When they are not here I will go with Nigel and Tyree and play paintball, or we'll go to an escape room; we're in college, we just want to explore.  We don't know what is going to happen after this year so we've been trying to have fun and live it up."

Wherever the game takes him in the future, there is one person while believes that Barge will prosper.

"Bull will be very successful in life, he is a good person and a hard worker.  He is always going to do the things that he is supposed to do to be a success," Stewart says.

Because that's how one overcomes perception, which the "undersized" Barge has been doing ever since first stepping onto the football field.

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