Glen Yancey is a native of Savannah, Tennessee. He graduated from Central High School in Savannah in 1943 and served in the armed forces from 1943-1945. During that time he saw 21 months of combat in Europe.

He was awarded the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster for being wounded in combat twice. When he returned to the states he attended Union and graduated in 1949. While at Union he played football, basketball and tennis.

Yancey began his coaching career at Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham. After one season at Howard he took the head football and basketball coaching positions at Cordele, Georgia.

His 1951 Cordele team went 13-0 and won the Georgia State Football Championship and Yancey was named Georgia Coach of the Year. He remained at the school for two seasons.

Yancey became the head football coach and athletic director at Vigor High School in 1954 during the schools second year as a high school, and built a highly successful football program. He was a driving force in the construction of Prichard Stadium where Vigor and Blount still play their home games today.

Vigor teams finished in the top 10 in the state several times while he was the head coach, and was voted State Champions by the Birmingham Post Herald in 1960 with a 9-0 record. His 1965 team finished 8-2 with future Alabama star quarterback Scott Hunter at the helm of the offense. He was also selected to coach the Alabama All-Star game in Tuscaloosa.

One of the highlights of his coaching career came in 1965 during the Murphy-Vigor game, when 31,000 spectators showed up for the game at Ladd Stadium. His overall record at Vigor was 74-35-4 over 12 seasons. In 1970 he became the head coach at Davidson High School where he coached Richard Todd, another Crimson Tide quarterback. In three years with the Warriors his teams finished 24-6-1.

Yancey returned to Georgia for three seasons (1973-75) at Sequoyah High School in Doraville with a record of 3-24-3.

In 1984 he took over for the McGill-Toolen Yellow Jackets for five years and a 32-24 record with three playoff berths. In 1989 he moved over to John LeFlore High School for three years before going to Faith Academy as the head coach in 1994 for another two seasons. His last four teams failed to produce winning records and he retired from coaching in Alabama in 1996.

In 2006 Glen was inducted into the Mobile Sports Hall of Fame and in 2007 he was inducted into the Prichard Sports Hall of Fame. Yancey won several city championships and won the Coach of the Year Award multiple times. He also organized the first Coaches Association in Mobile County, where he served as President.