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MOBILE, Ala. – Before a nearly completely filled team room in the football fieldhouse on the University of South Alabama campus, Steve Campbell was officially introduced as the second football head coach in program history.

Below is a recap of the event.

Director of Athletics Dr. Joel Erdmann
Opening statement:
"Thank you everyone for being here today. When we first discussed this event and press conference, we were actually hoping to do it outside. As tough as Mobilians are, I'm not sure that would have worked real well today. Thank you for braving the elements and being here. I would like to welcome our fans that are joining us live on JagNationTV. I would like to express, briefly, an appreciation in a somewhat anonymous fashion to many people who were involved in the search process. I'm not going to put them out there by name, but they know who they are. They took a lot of time out of their individual lives to help us with this identification and selection of our next head coach."

President Dr. Tony Waldrop
Opening statement:
"Like Joel [Erdmann], I want to thank you all for showing up here today. I want to tell a little bit about a discussion I had with my mother-in-law, who lives in North Carolina. She's here visiting, and she has become a passionate Jaguar fan herself. So I said 'Do you want to come?' and she said 'No, no. I don't want to go out in the weather. Will there be anyone there?' She's a wonderful lady and great mother-in-law, but she didn't quite understand the passion of the Jaguar fans. So thank you for being here."

On the characteristics they were looking for in a head coach:
"We're very excited about the person you are going to meet shortly. When we look for a football coach, we look for someone that is going to win. There are many other characteristics that are important to us as well. I want to very quickly mention some of those. Being a university president, I have to say academics are important, and they are important. I want to give you two quotes from our new football coach, which tells me he's the right one. Just flat out said it like this and I quote, 'Academics are very important.' Furthermore, we want to know that the coach is going to hold them accountable and I quote again, 'My job is to insure that players do well academically.'

 "We also looked for someone who is going to be engaged in the community, not just playing football. He told how the team each year raises dollars for Toys for Tots. Also, that they had a free football camp for kids each year. A third thing was character and what are they like as an individual.

"I had someone call me from another institution that he was at, and they could not say enough good about him. They just kept going on and on and on, but two things really stuck in my mind. 'He's a highly ethical person' and 'He'll never get you in trouble'.

"Then there's another thing I think is important and that's athletics and how we do on the playing field. This is someone that has never had a losing season as a coach. It's someone who as a player and a coach at two different institutions, they were national champions. We want a winner, I think we have a winner. I know that no matter what, you're all going to be fans, but won't it be nice as he starts directing the team that we start having the kind of seasons we know we can have here at the University of South Alabama. Thank you all again for coming."

Director of Athletics Dr. Joel Erdmann
On the coaching search process:
"The search from the get-go was a legitimate, authentic national search considering many people – large numbers at first, whittled down to approximately a dozen in which there was face-to-face meetings and in-depth conversations as well as phone call upon phone call.

"Before we began that search, as you normally do you think about what we need and want. The things that we were committed to gaining and getting are the following:  strong leadership, someone who has a vision and plan to achieve that vision, someone who has had success and success that is sustained at a demonstrated level of consistency. A person who is passionate and has deep love for the game of football, and for teaching student-athletes and teaching the game they love. A person who understands the value of trust and mutual respect, and relationships between student-athletes and coaches, support staff, fans, the media and anyone who is involved in and around Jaguar football and the University of South Alabama. Obviously, an important piece is recruiting. What type of recruiting connections and background? What is there personal credibility in the eyes of existing high school, junior college and four-year college coaches? What is that person known as? The ability to have clear expectations, communicate those expectations and have a degree of accountability toward those expectations. And ultimately a role model – somebody who walks the walk. Talk can be cheap – somebody who walks the walk every day.

"Throughout the process, and it was a thorough process, it became very obviously clear that we had a guy. That guy was the only guy offered the job, and that guy took the job and is sitting here with us today.

"On a side note, one of my best friends in the world is a guy named Brad Teague. Brad Teague is the Athletic Director at Central Arkansas. When I talked to him, he is a man I trust and have known for many years. He's very good at what he does, and you can imagine the things he had to say about his head football coach at that time. Now the real work really begins. People think this is an end, but we're just in the starting blocks now. And it's not just a singular man – it's not Coach Campbell, it's all of us in this room – it's all of us to support Coach Campbell and spread the word as we have, and support our program, student-athletes and University. One man can't achieve everything, he has to have the help of everyone in this room and everybody outside of this room. What we have here today is the leader that we're all going to work with and for. I can't tell you how happy I am. He was happy; when I made the phone call he said he was happy. I said, 'You're not nearly as happy as I am.' Please help me enthusiastically welcome the next leader of South Alabama football, Steve Campbell."

Head coach Steve Campbell
Opening statement:
"Wow.  I'm very, very excited and to say that would be an understatement.  Like [Dr.] Joel Erdmann] said, the work starts now, but this is a culmination of something for me.  [South Alabama] is a place I've always wanted to be.  

"I grew up in a small town called Cantonment, Fla., just outside of Pensacola – a paper mill town where on Friday night the whole town shut down and everybody went and watched the high school football team play.  You went and watched the football team, you supported the band and you supported the cheerleaders; football was part of the fabric of the community and that's how I was raised.  

"Growing up back then, you had three channels on TV – Channel 3, Channel 5 and Channel 10.  Two of those channels were out of Mobile, so I grew up watching [former South Alabama baseball head coach] Eddie Stanky baseball highlights, [former South Alabama men's basketball head coach] Ronnie Arrow basketball highlights; we grew up watching the South Alabama Jags in all sports.  I always said that if [South Alabama] were to ever start football, it'd be a gold mine and with as well as their other programs had done, once they started football, South Alabama could take off and there's no telling how far they could go.  

"The years passed and South Alabama started football, and it has always been a dream of mine to be able to come back home.  I've still got family in Cantonment, family in Seminole where my mom and my brother live, my sister lives in Pensacola, and my other brother lives in Robertsdale, so this is home.  I'm very excited about the opportunity to come home.  That's great in and of itself, but the thing I'm even more excited about is the chance to take South Alabama football to the next level and to win championships, which is something I've been thinking about for a long, long time.

"I would like to introduce a couple of people, my family who have been very instrumental in anything that we've been able to be part of – my wife, Shellie, my daughter, Tate, and my son Steven, Jr.  Steven, Jr.'s an hour-and-a-half down the road from here in Perkinston [Miss.] where he's the athletic director at Mississippi Gulf Coast [Community College], so we're going to be calling on him for some recruiting help.  I know the guy at Gulf Coast, so that's one good tie right there.  The wives are always in the background, but Shellie has always given me tremendous support each step of the way, and I know that she's excited to get back down here and help us take this thing to the next level.

"I would like to thank Dr. [Tony] Waldrop and Joel for this opportunity, along with the guys they had on the search committee – they had an outstanding search committee.  I know there were some outstanding applicants and that is a tribute to what Joey [Jones] was able to accomplish here.  Coach Jones took this program from its infancy and really built a tremendous foundation that made this a very desirable place for a lot of guys in the coaching profession.

"Last night I checked and my cell phone had 257 unread text messages.  People want to come to South Alabama and that's a testament to what the administration has put into place here and what Joey was able to establish here in laying that foundation.  It's an honor to be here and I appreciate that opportunity."

On what type of team Jaguar fans will see on the field:
"On the football field, what we can promise is a team that you can be proud of, one that lays it on the line each and every day; no one's going to play harder than us.  It's an easy thing to say, but that comes from the work.  We are going to go to work every day and build our foundation on three things.  

"Number one, we're going to be an unselfish football team to where we care more about each other than we do about ourselves.  We're going to be a team that doesn't care about whether or not I score the touchdown, but if I can throw the block that helps you score the touchdown, I'm going to be fired up about it.  We're going to be more worried about how well the team does.  I've been blessed to be around three national championship teams and they were all different, but the one thing each team had was that they were unselfish.  They loved each other and played for each other, and that will be a cornerstone of our program.

"The second thing is that we will get better every day that we're out there and be better than we were the day before.  That's in the weight room, on the practice field, in the class room and in the community.  You don't want to stay the same as you were yesterday, because if you do, somebody who did get better either caught you or pulled ahead of you.  Every day, you've got to push to get better.

"The third thing is to do the little things as close to perfect as possible.  We may play someone who is bigger than us, but if I get in the best stance or have the best knee bend and do the little things, he's going to have to be perfect in order to beat me.  We want to be unselfish, get better every day and do the little things as close to perfect as possible.

On his coaching philosophy:
"Offensively, we will be a no-huddle team.  We're Jaguars so we're going to play a fast and spread the ball around, but I'm offensive line guy at heart and I believe that you've got to be physical and be able to run the football; you win at the line of scrimmage.

"We're going to be an attack oriented defense.  The number one thing for us is that we're going to stop the run.  We're going to try to make the opponent's offense one dimensional and then we're going to get after them with our blitz packages.

"Special teams are going to be special.  I'm going to spend a lot of time on coaching that group myself.  Each phase of the game is very important.  We have some really talented guys on both sides of the ball coming back along with some talented players on special teams, so that's exciting for me."

On the meeting he had with the team:
"I was able to visit with a good handful of the returning players and had a good visit with them.  I'm looking forward to visiting with the guys who had already gone home after finals.  I'll be contacting them over the break.  I'm looking forward to getting all our players back in January and going to work in the weight room and in the off season."

On putting a staff together:
We're going to put together a staff pretty quickly.  There have been a number of coaches interested in going to work here at the University of South Alabama.  Mobile is an outstanding city.  We've got outstanding facilities at South Alabama and we are renowned here academically.  I've received calls from coaches at the Power 5s who want to come here.  They want to live down here and send their children here, so this is an exciting time to put together a staff."

On recruiting:
"With the new early signing period, we've got to get out there and hit the road recruiting.  Normally, the first Wednesday in February is your signing day.  This year the NCAA gives you December 20th through the 22nd for an early signing period.  It'll be interesting to see how that plays out and how different people handle that.  I know we've got some outstanding players committed and we need to get out there and hold onto those guys.  We're going to be evaluating our roster and see what holes we need to fill."

Closing remarks:
"Again, this is a very exciting time for me.  I can't wait to get down here and go to work.  Let's get this thing going and take it to the next level.  We have a tremendous foundation here and a lot of great young men coming back who are ready to take that next step.  I'm very honored, very humbled and very excited to be the head coach at the University of South Alabama.  Thank you very, very much."

For more information about South Alabama athletics, check back with www.usajaguars.com, and follow the Jaguars at www.twitter.com/USAJaguarSports. Season tickets for all Jaguar athletic events can be purchased by calling (251) 461-1USA (1872).

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