Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Campbell headed to South Alabama
University of Central Arkansas Coach Steve Campbell was hired to lead the South Alabama football program, Jaguars Athletic Director Joel Erdmann announced Thursday.
Campbell, 51, signed a four-year, $600,000 per year contract, according to Erdmann, that also includes other performance incentives.
The move comes after Campbell led UCA (10-2) to a Southland Conference championship season that ended in a 21-15 loss to New Hampshire on Saturday in the second round of the FCS playoffs.
He will replace Joey Jones, who resigned after the Jaguars lost 52-0 to Georgia Southern on Nov. 18. Jones was the coach when the football program began in 2008 and finished with a 52-50 overall record. South Alabama was 4-8 this season and missed a bowl game for the fourth time in program history.
“Joey’s a tremendous man and a tremendous coach,” Erdmann said. “He gave birth to this program, and he was tremendous to work with. We’ve started another chapter in that book, and we look forward to Coach Campbell doing some exciting things.”
“What he’s done in the past 20 years is pretty remarkable. What he did at UCA is wonderful. He’s somebody that you always kind of have an eye on.”
Erdmann said the coaching search started with a list of close to 50 candidates, which was trimmed to 15 to 20 phone calls, and then 12 face-to-face interviews.
Campbell’s interview, Erdmann said, was within the last five days.
“What we were planning to do was work around Steve’s schedule, according to how the team had done,” Erdmann said. “We wanted to be respectful of UCA, and what I would’ve done my best to do if they kept winning was minimize the distraction.”
Campbell had a 33-15 record in four seasons with UCA at the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision, and he will now lead a South Alabama program that competes in the Football Bowl Subdivision in the Sun Belt Conference, where Arkansas State University is a member.
“We’re happy for him. We really are,” UCA Athletic Director Brad Teague said. “He’s done great things for our program,
and we’ll have to work to replace him, as good as he was.”
Campbell met with the Bears football team at 2 p.m. Thursday in Conway, just as South Alabama was releasing his hiring. He will be formally introduced as the Jaguars’ new coach at a 1 p.m. news conference today in Mobile, Ala.
Teague said he has already began the process of hiring a new coach for the first time since Campbell replaced Clint Conque in 2013 — a coaching search that lasted six days.
“We’d like to do it within one week again. No reason to wait,” said Teague, who said he already has “three or four” top candidates. “There’s plenty of interest, since we’ve been a great program. Steve’s elevated it to a height we’ve never seen.”
The move to Mobile sets Campbell about 70 miles away from his hometown of Pensacola, Fla.
“I was born and raised in this area, just down the road outside of Pensacola, and have always felt that if South Alabama started football it would be a gold mine, a place where the sky is the limit and you can definitely compete for championships at the highest level,” Campbell said in a statement. He did not return attempts for comment from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Coach Jones did a terrific job of getting the program started and laying a tremendous foundation. This is an opportunity to get back home and, more
than that, to take what Joey has started and raise it to the next level and win some championships.”
Campbell was the starting center on Troy’s 1987 football team that won the NCAA Division II National Championship, and he was a graduate assistant at Auburn from 1988-89 under Hall of Fame Coach Pat Dye. Then, Campbell was an offensive line coach and offensive coordinator at Delta State from 1990-1992, and he was an offensive coordinator at Nicholls State from 1993-1995 before becoming the running backs coach at Southwest Mississippi Community College in 1996.
He was the head coach at Southwest Mississippi for two seasons before he was hired as the head coach at Delta State in 1999, where he had a 27-8 record in three seasons and won the Division II National Championship in 2000. From there, Campbell was the offensive coordinator for one season (2002) at Middle Tennessee State before becoming the offensive line coach at Mississippi State for the 2003 season.
Campbell became the head coach at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in 2004, where he had an 87-22 record in 10 seasons and won the NCAA National Junior College Championship in 2007.
South Alabama will be Campbell’s first head coaching job at the FBS level, and Erdmann said he believed Campbell was “absolutely” qualified.