Redblacks' head coach Rick Campbell looks to step out of his famed dad's shadow

WINNIPEG—As predicted, Ottawa Redblacks' head coach Rick Campbell's bloodlines have become a matter of significant discussion this week. However, that's not where he wants the focus to be. Campbell's the son of legendary Eskimos' executive Hugh Campbell, and he also got his own CFL coaching start with that franchise, so there's been plenty of talk about his family and his ties to Edmonton so far this week. In the head coaches' introductory press conference Wednesday with Eskimos' head coach Chris Jones, though, Campbell said the key lesson he got from his father was to stand on his own.

"He's pretty hands-off; I guess I got more of it through osmosis over the years," Campbell said. "He has advice, and he's my dad, and we have a good relationship, but if you know him, you know his personality, he's going to say just keep working and grinding away and do your thing. Probably his best advice was 'Be yourself.' You just keep working away and grinding away and see if you can find a way to get it done."

Hugh Campbell certainly managed to do that. After an impressive playing career as a wide receiver first at Washington State University and then with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, where he earned the nickname "Gluey Huey," Campbell retired as a player after the 1969 season to take a head coaching job at Spokane, Washington's Whitworth College (now Whitworth University). He found plenty of success there, then headed to the CFL with Edmonton, serving as the team's head coach from 1977 to 1982, making the Grey Cup each season and winning five straight championships from 1978 to 1982. Interestingly, as noted during Wednesday's press conference, he was only named Coach of the Year once despite all that success; Rick Campbell, who's nominated for that award this year, said Wednesday that it's remarkable to possibly be able to match his dad in that category in just his second season as a head coach.

"It sounds like a pretty good deal to me, I don't even have to win the Grey Cup," Campbell said. "He won it five times in a row and won once, so I guess the standard is pretty high for Coach of the Year."

After stints in the USFL and NFL, Hugh Campbell returned to Edmonton as the Eskimos' general manager from 1986 to 1997 and as the team president and CEO from 1998 to 2006. He made a major impact on this league, and Rick Campbell said he appreciates what his dad did in the CFL, even if he isn't necessarily following quite in his footsteps.

"I'm proud of who my dad is," he said. "You know, he's a CFL lifer, been around the league a long time in a lot of roles, and obviously a great guy you can learn from. At the same time, I'm just trying to be my own guy and be my own coach. I've learned – I learned a lot from him, more from a personal standpoint over the years on how to treat people and all that. At the same time, I've had a lot of experiences in this league with a lot of different teams, and I'm just trying to be my own guy and try to win football games."

The younger Campbell started his coaching career at the University of Oregon before heading to Edmonton in 1999 as a special-teams coordinator and defensive backs coach, reportedly despite some objections from his dad. Since then, he's been working in this league in a variety of roles, holding that special teams and defensive backs role in Edmonton until 2004 and then serving as the Eskimos' defensive coordinator from 2005 to 2008, heading to Winnipeg to coach the defensive backs and the special teams in 2009, serving as a running backs coach with Calgary in 2010, returning to Edmonton as assistant head coach/special teams coordinator in 2011, and then working as Calgary's defensive coordinator for 2012 and 2013 before being named the Redblacks' inaugural head coach. He said he had plenty of notable coaching mentors along the way.

"I know for me, I'm fortunate to have worked with some guys that have lasted a long time and won a lot of games," Campbell said. "I was fortunate to work with Don Matthews in Edmonton, was fortunate enough to work with Coach Huff [John Hufnagel] in Calgary. I was at the University of Oregon before I came up to Edmonton, and Coach [Mike] Bellotti and Coach [Bob] Foster and some guys down there. A lot of people that – I have a great amount of respect that people that can stay in this game for a long time, and win in this game over time. Because it's not easy to do, and there's a lot of people that come and go. But the guys that can stay in and do it and win over time, there's a reason, and there's a good reason to listen to those guys because they have a lot of good advice."

Campbell said the year he spent in Calgary working on the offensive side of the ball was particularly memorable.

"Looking back, one of the best years for me is when I coached with Chris in Calgary one year, I went to the offensive side of the ball for a year," he said. "Because I had done special teams, been a D coordinator for a long time, and I wanted to look at things from all angles. Like when Chris talks about having those conversations with Scott [Milanovich] or Jason [Maas] or Dave [Dickenson] or those guys, it's always good to look at things from the opposite perspective."

So, the younger Campbell is blazing his own trail, and doing so with his own mentors. However, his dedication to focusing on one small event at a time seems very much out of his dad's playbook.

"We've talked about this whole season being a marathon of going and trying to run to the finish line, and we said when you get to the finish line of the marathon– the crowd gets bigger, there's a lot more cameras, all that stuff, paying attention," Campbell said. "But the recipe for winning doesn't stay the same. I think we got enough coaches that have been around this league long enough, and players that have been around this league long enough, to understand the difference—the feeling of winning the Grey Cup and the feeling of losing the Grey Cup. You know, sometimes a rookie guy might say this was easy, well, I'm going to play in the Grey Cup every year. But the older guys let him know that you want to make the most of this opportunity. And we really do best for us when we worry about just getting prepared and playing football, and the other stuff around you kind of got to keep the blinders on and try to keep focus."

Campbell went on to make a joke about the lights in the room were "making it look like a car's going to drive into me on the highway," and he cracked the room up with his response to the traditional sex question, so that added to the rest of his press conference shows how he clearly has both a sense of humour and an ability to interact with the media when needed. However, it doesn't seem to be a role he really relishes; it appears he'd rather stick to football and stay out of the spotlight. That was shown in his earlier comments about how being at the Grey Cup as a head coach (as compared to as an assistant, a role where he made Grey Cup appearances in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2012) and in the media spotlight is different, and not necessarily in a preferable way.

"Yeah, I know one difference I was just talking to Chris earlier about is we actually have some position meetings going on right now because we practice first today in the morning so that – I'm doing this instead of that's definitely different – different for me," Campbell said. "But I think you can still – you know, I think you appreciate this whole process. And you know, I'll be back with the team here when I'm done with this."

Both Campbell and Jones seem to share a "one thing at a time" approach of focusing on the present, not the past, and Jones summarized that particularly well.

"You know, the way we approach it as far as team-wise, we just approach it game by game," he said. "You know, and it's not about me, it's not about Rick, it's not about, you know, Rick's dad and what he did, and – it's about this game, it's about our players. You know, and all the history's all fine and good, but it really comes down to how well prepared we both are."

That preparation is going to be a big focus for Campbell this week, and it again appears to be something his dad would find familiar. So, while he's pursued his own path to get there, he seems to have very much wound up on the same track of "working away and grinding." He said he and his team plan to continue that approach this week, focusing on the football despite the external stories and distractions, and that doing so is vital given the stakes.

"The difference between winning and losing the Grey Cup–I mean, if you win the Grey Cup, you–you're a Grey Cup champion forever and you'll remember it forever," Campbell said. "So that's where you want the focus to be, is that you're here first as a football player. We're not going to discourage our guys from interacting with some fans some and enjoying the process, but it's got to be about football."

It certainly is for the younger Campbell.