VIDEO: Reggie Love

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- On the presidential campaign trail, there are hundreds of young staffers who have been working their entire lives to get a job in the White House.

And then there's Reggie Love.

At 26, Love, a former Duke University basketball and football star isn't exactly sure how he ended up as one of Barack Obama's most indispensable aides on the trail this year.

As Obama's "body man," he has spent almost every hour of every day with the presumptive Democratic nominee for the last 15 months.

He makes sure Obama gets up on time in the morning, gets in the shower and has breakfast. He makes sure he has his daily briefing books and list of fundraisers or superdelegates to call that day. He makes sure he gets to bed at night.

In between, he does a thousand other tasks that busy presidential candidates like Obama cannot do for themselves.

Love, a Charlotte native, majored in political science at Duke University. But until he fell backward into a job in Obama's Senate office in Washington in early 2006, he didn't expect to work in politics.

"Before I started working for Barack, I was very cynical about politics," he said in a recent interview.

He hoped to become a professional athlete. He almost made it -- and still might, at least overseas.

He was never the best player on Duke's basketball team during his run from 2000 to 2005. Playing forward and center, though, he was a key role player during a stretch when Duke won a national championship and several Atlantic Coast Conference championships.

On Duke's sub-par football team, Love stood out. As a 6-foot-4, 225-pound wide receiver, he was good enough to try out for two NFL squads, the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers, though he missed the cut for both.

In 2006, a friend alerted him to an opening in Obama's Senate office in Washington. He got the job, and when Obama decided to run for president, Love moved on with him.

Mentally, he says, the last 15 months on the campaign trail have been like playing four straight seasons of college sports. Physically, he's feeling better than he did during the bruising NFL training camps.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Obama pointed out that one of the body man's most important roles is making sure the candidate isn't overwhelmed by demands to call fundraisers, or meet local supporters, or read a draft of a speech.

Love's temperament is suited for the job, he said.

"People . . . want me here or want me there, or are making requests, or are wanting some phone call out of me. Having somebody who is a good people person is really important," he said of Love.

The body man position has been around for years but only gained notoriety with the television show "The West Wing" that made a lead character of the president's body man, Charlie Young, played by Dulé Hill.

Contact Sean Mussenden at (202) 662-7668 or smussenden@mediageneral.com.