Rick Campbell has the CFL in his genes
Son carries on father’s football philosophies
—There was a time when the father thought the son would be anything but a football coach.
The father is Hugh Campbell, CFL icon, and the son, Rick Campbell, is making his own name his own way, as head coach of the first-year Ottawa Redblacks.
The father, 73, and retired from the game since 2006, casts a vast shadow, having won 10 Grey Cups as a player, coach, general manager and executive mostly with the Edmonton Eskimos. The only son, inquisitive, bright, could have taken any number of directions away from that silhouette.
“He had such a great interest in the world, everything from astronomy to geography,” Hugh says, “I could have seen him be a pilot or something rather than a football coach.”
Yet, as Campbell adds, “sometimes things get into the blood of a family.”
So it is that Hugh’s daughter, Molly, works for the Calgary Stampeders as manager of the club’s website and communications, and Rick, in his first head coaching gig after 15 years as a CFL assistant, on Friday returns to Edmonton for a game against the Eskimos, the organization that helped Rick get his start, and where his father walks on water.
A bonus to Ottawa’s return to the CFL after a nine-year absence: catching up with some of the game’s luminaries. On the phone line from Coolin, Idaho is the legendary Hugh T. Campbell. Among his many feats, he was receiver “Gluey Huey” on the Saskatchewan Roughriders team that beat Ottawa to win the 1966 Cup, and coached the Eskimos to five straight Grey Cups from 1978-82.
Coaching football is hard on families. Hugh, Louise and their four children fared better than most, creating a habit of dinners together even if it meant little kids eating at 8:30 or 9 at night, when dad got home. Hugh didn’t imagine Rick wanted to live that kind of lifestyle when he grew up.
The first inclination Rick might make a career in football? Hugh went out to see his boy playing high school ball in Edmonton, on the rare occasion when the schedule allowed it. Rick was a quarterback/running back, and on this day was a tailback running wide, when he suddenly cut inside to earn straightup yardage. Goodness, Hugh thought to himself, he looks like Jim Germany, the Eskimos running back, using leverage to catch defenders off balance.
“Sometimes things get into the blood of a family.”
Hugh Campbel
“He did things that showed he was paying attention,” Hugh says. “Not things I had taught him, but he’d taught himself by watching.”
A coach’s attention to detail. Rick worked under a good high school coach at Lewis and Clark in Spokane, Washington, and gained precious experience as a graduate assistant at the University Oregon, where he helped integrate computers into the coaching program.
In the late 1990s, Eskimos head coach Kay Stephenson asked Hugh if he could hire Rick as an assistant, but Hugh refused, because he didn’t like the optics. In 1999, then-head coach Don Matthews forced the issue.
Hugh said to Matthews, “I don’t know if you want to fight the media over that,” to which Matthews replied, ‘you’ll have to order me not to, otherwise I’m hiring him.’
Campbell said: “It’s on you, Don.”
That was Rick’s CFL entrance. He found his way with different organizations, ultimately leaving a terrific job in Calgary as defensive co-ordinator under John Hufnagel, to take on this Ottawa challenge. Though he had other head coaching options, he pursued the Redblacks hard, and some qualified assistants followed him.
Stepping out from the shadow is a life’s work. Hugh and Rick both insist they rarely talk football, but as Hugh says, “no one believes it.” Since Ottawa’s Game 1 loss to Winnipeg, the two have spoken once, briefly.
Most often, they just catch up, as adult family members do.
It’s eerie, how much the son sounds like the father. The voice, inflection of speech, the calm, cool manner.
“He’s smarter and more alert than I am,” Hugh says. “I just am real proud of him. He has a really good philosophy on coaching and on life.”
The philosophy is one that Hugh also embraced:
Football is not the most important thing in the world, but you can’t be successful if you don’t treat it like it is.
“There’s a lot of people doing things more important than coaching football,” Hugh says, “but football is so competitive, and the only way to do it is to leave no stone unturned and be fanatical about preparation and motivation.”
The biggest thing he learned from his dad, Rick says, “football is about how you treat people. Putting them in a position to succeed.”
Iconic Hugh is impressed with the Redblacks startup operation, and thrilled Ottawa is back in the loop. A 10th team is the next step. Success will come, he says, but won’t be overnight for an expansion club that can’t instantly match the depth of the league’s top organizations. Time is required.
Time is suddenly Hugh Campbell’s friend. When they aren’t keeping up with their four children (Jill and Robin are the other daughters) and four grandchildren, Hugh and Louise like to cycle and hike. They kayak in the San Diego Bay. They have parachuted with Navy Seals and flown onto an aircraft carrier at sea.