By Roger Van Der Horst

Staff Writer/News & Observer

reprinted with permission

BUIES CREEK - Ten days before its first football game in 58 years, Campbell University was making sure the new scoreboard lights up, plugging in all the plugs and, above all, hoping ticket buyers wouldn't outnumber places to put them in a half-finished stadium.

Not a bad problem to have, if you like to look at the camel's hump as half-full.

"I mean, we're selling tickets left and right," athletic director Stan Williamson said in a telephone interview. "My biggest concern right now is how many people we can get inside that fence to watch the football game next Saturday."

The stadium, which is being built in phases as more money is raised, is designed to hold 10,000 permanent seats. About 2,200 were completed in time for the Fighting Camels' opening game against Birmingham-Southern at 1 p.m. on Saturday, so Campbell was trying to put up enough temporary bleachers to seat the rest of an expected crowd of 4,270. As a last resort, some fans might have to watch from the standing-room areas.

It will be first-come, first-served for general admission seats.

So far, anyway, football is doing what the Baptist university intended when it decided in April 2006 to bring back the game -- giving students, alumni and area residents a reason to spend Saturdays on campus.

When asked why the school needs football, Williamson said: "The No. 1 reason is just college life."

To that end, Campbell has spent $6 million, most of it on the new stadium and fieldhouse; joined the Pioneer Football League, with teams from Dayton, Ohio, to San Diego; rounded up 110 players; and even enticed a semi-retired former assistant of Chuck Amato back onto the field.

Stemming retirement

Long before Campbell re- entered the sport and N.C. State fired Amato, Greg Williams knew he'd never leave Raleigh to take another coaching job. He had played at State, gone through two coaching stints there and moved 11 times in 38 years.

So, naturally, when his boss was let go, Williams figured he had seen his "last rodeo" as a coach. The defensive specialist spent a year doing clinics and giving seminars, and at 61, with five years at State, he was eligible for retirement benefits.

He chuckles now just thinking of the unexpected opportunity to become the assistant head coach at a non-scholarship program. With a resume that lists stops at Georgia, West Virginia and LSU, he admitted he was skeptical when he heard from the new coach, Dale Steele, in January.

"I was like, 'Campbell? What are they gonna have?' " he recalled.

His wife, Mary Anne, still a receptionist at NCSU's Murphy Football Center, persuaded him to drive down for look-see. What he saw was a new fieldhouse and artificial-surface field before the team had played its first game.

"And I thought, 'Well, you know, I don't have to move, and maybe this is gonna be a first-class thing,' " Williams said. "... If I could have gotten a job at Duke, or even Carolina or East Carolina, someplace in this area, I would have taken the job. But I didn't get any, so this came up, and I'm glad I didn't get any of those jobs. This is fun."

Unlike Steele and Williams, who's working with the defensive backs, most of the coaches have little experience. All but one, however, have played or coached major college football. The idea of a new college program far removed from a pressure-cooker environment proved so appealing that Steele said he routinely heard from 80 to 85 coaches every time he was ready to hire another assistant.

"One of the things about starting from scratch is we don't have any baggage," Steele said. "Nobody's got an attitude that we have to change. We're a blank page. I think that challenge intrigues a lot of coaches."

Before they arrived, though, Steele was on his own searching for players. He started with the student body. Fifty-two students showed up at an initial meeting in 2006, and of those, about 10 have made it this far. They also served as Steele's first recruiters, giving high school players campus tours and talking up a program that didn't really exist yet.

With only an administrative assistant and no staff, Steele tried to streamline the process by inviting groups of prospective recruits to campus.

"We would have large group sessions, and then I would tell everybody at the end, 'If you want to talk to me individually about where we're going, I'll do it.' Well, there were a couple of Saturdays that I was here until 9 o'clock at night, and they'd be lined up out the door waiting," Steele said.

A former high school coach himself, Steele knew that good players would slip through the cracks in the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) because they didn't fit the ideal profile, whether they were a step too slow or 10 pounds too light. It was those players whom Steele chose to pursue, contacting high school coaches around the state by e-mail, phone or "sending flowers out to 'em."

Because Campbell can't offer athletic scholarships -- a major reason the private school chose the Football Championship Subdivision level (formerly Division I-AA) -- Steele also sought recruits who would qualify for need-based or academic aid. Most of the players are getting some financial assistance, he said. (In a twist on the usual college football model, though, the enrollment of an additional 100 or so tuition-paying student-athletes is actually expected to help pay for the sport, said Williamson, the athletic director.)

In the made-for-TV story, Steele would have found a ragged collection of overweight biology students and 145-pound wannabes to play for Campbell. In truth, everyone on the roster played high school football; more than 60 made all-conference or better; and 18 were team captains.

Steele said he immediately put the best ones on defense, figuring that will give Campbell the best chance to win in its first season. The Camels won't be afraid to punt often, trying to keep the score close. But it's hard to imagine a former East Carolina assistant under Steve Logan staying conservative indefinitely.

"I don't like that term 'West Coast offense,' but that's basically what we are," said Steele, who wants his team to master a few plays and run them out of many different formations. "We're gonna put a lot of -- this is a term Steve used a lot -- 'eyewash' on things. We'll make you think we're doing one thing when we're still doing the same thing."

He has a feeling he put together a better team than he thought he could in the first couple of years, not that much is expected of Campbell. Jeff Sagarin's preseason computer ranking lists the Fighting Camels at No. 244 among 245 college football teams.

Steele and his staff won't know for sure what they have until Saturday.

"It'll be a surprise for the kids, for us, for everybody," Williams said. "Heck, I don't know what's gonna happen."

Staff writer Roger Van Der Horst can be reached at roger.vanderhorst@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-4558