  Is Hugh Campbell going to show up on the Calgary sidelines wearing a Stampeders baseball cap again this coming Sunday? (Christine Vanzella/QMI file) |
OK. Let’s get to the bottom of this right now.
Is Hugh Campbell going to really rub it in and show up on the Calgary sidelines wearing a Stampeders hat and help them to a victory like it looked like he did last weekend?
There’s an entire week to go before the Edmonton Eskimos visit McMahon Stadium in Calgary. But inquiring minds need to know.
Is Campbell going to show up on the Calgary sidelines wearing a Stampeders baseball cap again this coming Sunday?
What was he doing there last weekend against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers? And what did he have to do with that last play that ran the clock down and put the win away for Calgary?
It wasn’t how it appeared, said Campbell who says he’s a bit amused the way everything went down.
Hugh, who was at the game the night before cheering on the Eskimos in the box of former team president Jim Hole, took the trip down to Calgary to support his son Rick, an assistant coach with the Stamps.
He was planning on sitting in the stands.
“I drove to the game with Rick and ended up in John Hufnagel’s office talking to him for an hour,” said the former coach, GM and CEO of the Eskimos who managed to provide the Eskimos with a home playoff game for 25 consecutive years in those capacities.
“John said I could stand on the sidelines if I wanted,” said Campbell of the Stampeders’ GM and coach.
The only catch was that he had to wear a Stampeders hat.
“I figured why not? One game a year you’re allowed to root for your son as long as they’re not playing Edmonton.”
Campbell has always preferred to watch games on the sidelines. He did that for all seven years his old Saskatchewan Roughriders’ quarterback Ron Lancaster coached here.
“I’m not making any apologies.”
He said he did have a few conversations during the game but was not involved in anything to affect the game.
“At one point, Dave Dickenson came over and apologized for a play he called saying there was only one reason he called it — he was pretty sure it would work,” he said of the former Stampeders quarterback, now quarterbacks coach.
“I told him that’s the way it was in the old days.”
But then there was what happened at the end of the game.
At least one member of the Eskimos front office figured Campbell had to have something to do with it.
“Hughie loves the clock like no man in football,” said the conspiracy theorist.
The Stampeders were facing third-and-two with 27 seconds remaining and everybody in the stadium expecting punt. They took a time-count penalty which left seven.
Instead of punting from their own 28, QB Henry Burris took the snap and threw it to receiver Romby Bryant deep in his own endzone.
He ran out the clock surrendering the safety touch and preserving a 23-20 Stampeders win.
The TSN cameras appeared to catch Campbell and Hufnagel talking before that play was run.
“I didn’t have any input,” swears Campbell.
“The coaches were talking in front of me on how to do the clock. I ended up hearing the conversation.
Hufnagel turned to me as they sent the play in and said ‘This had better work!’
“I think it was a heck of a good play. I’d never seen it before. And apparently they’d practised it.”
Campbell appeared to be caught on camera on the Winnipeg sidelines the year before when his son, a former Eskimos assistant coach, was working as a Bombers assistant.
“I watched that game with Lyle Bauer and Paul Robson,” he said of two, now both former, Bombers general managers.
“It was a lopsided game so we went down early. TV made it look like we were on the sidelines but actually we were over on the practice field by the door to the Bomber offices. And I wasn’t wearing a hat then,” he laughed.
Campbell, who is back at his Idaho cottage this week, says he’ll make it to the Sunday game in Calgary.
“For sure I’ll go to the Labour Day game in Calgary and the Friday game back in Edmonton and I’ve already made arrangements to sit with Rick LeLacheur,” he said of the man who replaced him as Eskimos president and CEO.
Not on the sideline helping coach Calgary to a win?
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Campbell.
terry.jones@sunmedia.ca
