Is winning the XFL championship a bigger deal than winning the Super Bowl?

It would be to Reggie Barlow, the coach of the D.C. Defenders, who will square off against the Arlington Renegades in the XFL title game at 7 p.m. CDT Saturday at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. ABC will televise the contest.

A former Alabama State player and coach, Barlow has an NFL championship ring as a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who defeated the Oakland Raiders 48-21 in Super Bowl XXXVII on Jan. 26, 2003.

“I’ve been blessed to win a college championship as a coach and a player,” Barlow said. “It’s so much different when you do it as a coach. And this, to be on a pro level and to have an opportunity to win it, it would be better than me having a chance to win the Super Bowl because I was a player then.

“But this, we put this all together with the opportunity given by the league presidents and owners, so that part of it, because of the dynamics – you’re not talking about a team that was already there and you get to sprinkle you some pieces in and a coaching staff that was already there. It was literally a blank sheet of paper, and you have to get all these personalities from all these different places, mix them in together, make them become the brotherhood, respect and love and care for each other, so, yeah, it would be the best thing to happen outside of my kids.”

Saturday’s game will decide the championship of the third version of the XFL.

In the first, the Los Angeles Xtreme beat the San Francisco Demons 38-6 in the Million Dollar Game on April 21, 2001, and the league did not return. The second XFL made it through only half of its regular-season schedule in 2020 before folding in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

The 2023 XFL will reach its first finish line as a startup league on Saturday.

“I think it’s been a group of people who came together from all over the world – new process, new coaches and players – and we talked about trusting each other,” Barlow said of the Defenders’ success as a made-from-scratch team. “We knew we had to earn that. They had to earn ours, and we had to earn theirs, and that was going to be a work in progress. I think as we have continued to go throughout our season, they’ve trusted the coaching. They’ve trusted that we were going to take care of their bodies in terms of rest, limiting practice reps and all that stuff.

“And we still are working on that. It’s an everyday thing: You’re proving your trust. But it’s really based on that.”

The Defenders posted a 9-1 regular-season record and advanced to the championship game by beating the Seattle Sea Dragons 37-21 on April 30 in the North Division title contest.

D.C.’s performance earned Barlow the XFL Coach of the Year Award.

“That’s the thing that separates championship teams, separates great leaders is they have to finish,” Barlow said. “They have to finish the right way. Our guys understand that. We’ll continue to preach and teach that. Our coaches do a hell of a job of Paul Revere-ing the message.”

While the Defenders posted a record that was two games better than any other XFL team, the Renegades went 4-6 in the regular season – good enough to make the playoffs in the league’s weaker division while the 7-3 St. Louis Battlehawks missed the postseason in the North.

But Arlington upended the Houston Roughnecks 26-11 in the South Division title game on April 29.

The Renegades’ strong spot was on defense, starting with a defensive line anchored by former Auburn standout DaVonte Lambert, who made the All-XFL team, and former Enterprise High School star T.J. Barnes, a 6-foot-6, 369-pound roadblock.

Arlington scored the fewest points in the XFL. But with three games remaining in the regular season, the Renegades obtained quarterback Luis Perez from the Vegas Vipers. The former Birmingham Iron QB threw for 335 yards and one touchdown in Arlington’s 28-26 overtime loss to the Defenders on April 16 and 289 yards and three touchdowns in the Renegades’ semifinal victory.

“They compete with grit,” Barlow said. “I’m not shocked by that. They’re coached by Bob Stoops. Man, you want to talk about a football coach? I mean, this guy’s a Hall of Famer.”

Stoops came to the XFL after 17 seasons as Oklahoma’s coach.

A prep standout at Sidney Lanier in Montgomery, Barlow was a 1,000-yard receiver as a senior at Alabama State.

A fourth-round draft choice of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 1996, Barlow spent eight seasons as an NFL wide receiver. He remains the Jaguars’ career leader in punt-return yards.

After starting his coaching career as Alabama State’s quarterbacks coach, Barlow became the Hornets’ head coach in 2007.

In eight seasons as Alabama State’s coach, Barlow guided the Hornets to a 49-42 overall record and 38-28 in SWAC regular-season play.

Barlow then coached for five seasons at Virginia State. His teams posted a 34-16 overall mark with a 25-10 CIAA record. The Trojans won the league title in 2017.

“I went to an HBCU,” Barlow told WUSA-TV in Washington, “and you’re not supposed to go to the NFL and you’re not supposed to win a Super Bowl, so we’ve done all of those things. We had eight years in the NFL, so proving people wrong or proving them right, it’s just about our standard.”

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.