Jim Barker
Jim Barker (born August 25, 1956) is an American football executive and former coach who has spent much of his career in the Canadian Football League (CFL). He is the director of player personnel for the Toronto Argonauts.
Born in Pasadena, California, Barker built his coaching career in American college football. He worked as an assistant coach at San Francisco State (1978–1981), Occidental College (1982–1984), New Mexico State (1985–1987), Nevada (1988), and Pomona-Pitzer (1989–1995), where he also served as Pomona-Pitzer’s head baseball coach while coordinating the Sagehens’ offense.
Barker’s CFL careerIncluded various coaching and front-office roles. He served as head coach of the Toronto Argonauts in 1999 and again from 2010 to 2011, and as head coach of the Calgary Stampeders in 2003. He was Calgary’s general manager from 2005 to 2007 and later returned to the Argonauts as GM from 2011 to 2016. He also spent time as a football operations consultant and assistant coach with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and worked as a television analyst for CFL on TSN. Barker has won five Grey Cup championships over his career, including victories as both a coach and an administrator.
In 2022, Barker returned to the Argonauts as a senior advisor, left the role in 2023, and then rejoined TSN as a CFL panelist. On December 8, 2025, it was announced that Barker had rejoined the Argonauts as their director of player personnel.
This page was last edited on 29 January 2026, at 07:51 (CET).