Coach Cam Cameron on Preparation, People, and Non-Negotiables
Leadership · From Student of the Game
Coach Cam Cameron on Preparation, People, and Non-Negotiables
For the first time on Student of the Game, Brad Noll reads a guest's bio on air, because he wants listeners to hear its depth. Cam Cameron spent more than three decades coaching in the NFL and NCAA, including as head coach of the Miami Dolphins and Indiana University and offensive coordinator for the San Diego Chargers, Baltimore Ravens, and LSU. He began his career at Michigan under Bo Schembechler, and played both football and basketball at Indiana, the latter for Bob Knight.
Today Cam is an NFL consultant and real estate entrepreneur in Pinehurst, North Carolina, where he and his wife run a real estate business. Brad is clear that this is not a sports podcast. It is a show about lessons any accountant, painter, salesperson, or teacher can learn through the lens of sports, and few people have more of those lessons than Cam.
Discipline and Faith in Terre Haute
Cam was born in North Carolina and spent his early years in Durham with his mom and sister. He idolized George Karl and the North Carolina basketball program. With his mom working long days as a single parent, his grades slipped. Then she married a football coach who soon took the head job at Indiana State, and the family moved to Terre Haute when Cam was 12.
His stepfather set one rule, once: B's or better, or no sports. Cam never tested it and kept his grades up through college. Around the same time, three local men offered to sponsor him for a Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp. He went six straight years, came back as a counselor, and accepted Christ there.
His stepfather also taught him that it is better to be an hour early than a minute late. When Cam asked to ride along to the office and missed the 5 a.m. departure, he rode his bike several miles across town to the football offices. Brad notices two things in Cam's story right away: he never played the victim, and he was willing to be coached.
“If I stayed in coaching, I had zero chance to be the father I wanted to be. And that's a non-negotiable for me.”
Cam Cameron
Bouncing Back From 1 and 15
Brad's kids helped write the questions for this episode, and one was how to bounce back from a losing streak. Cam's Miami team went 1 and 15, a year after he had been part of a 14 and 2 season in San Diego. He starts with humility. "You've got to humble yourself and you've got to look inward first," he says. Every morning he looked in the mirror and asked whether he was giving the team, the front office, and the fans everything he had. He did.
Perspective helped, too. As a two-time cancer survivor, Cam learned to separate what is truly life-threatening from what is not, and he has watched people let a loss derail them. He also points to a twist: the only game Miami won that season was against Baltimore. The next year John Harbaugh, who had once coached for Cam at Indiana, hired him as offensive coordinator in Baltimore, and the Ravens beat Miami twice, including in the playoffs.
Cam is a big believer in positive self-talk. He describes Drew Brees encouraging himself out loud in practice, and Brad shares his habit on the golf course with his daughter, calling every shot, even a tough one, his favorite shot. The key, Cam says, is to challenge yourself without beating yourself up.
You Win With People
As a teenager, Cam found a book on his stepfather's shelf by Ohio State coach Woody Hayes called You Win With People. He did not fully understand it then, but every success he has been part of since came from the right people working together. "It doesn't take but one person in any organization to derail the whole thing," he says.
He separates managing from leading. Managing is sitting at a desk early in the morning building the day's schedule. Leading is getting to know people and learning from them. He also keeps a short list of non-negotiables and never took a job where he would have to compromise them. Brad connects that to the Noll Team's core values, which guide both big and small decisions. A few principles from the conversation:
- Hire people who can do the job, have room to grow, and can teach the leader something.
- Write down your non-negotiables and refuse to compromise them.
- Remember there is no secret. As former Ravens center Matt Birk put it, it comes down to hard work.
- Turn learning into action. Brad's mentor says education without implementation is just entertainment.
- Show up. Cam says the number one ability you can have is availability.
Practice Like You Play
Asked who practiced best, Cam names Drew Brees and Philip Rivers, who wanted to win every rep, and Antwaan Randle El, his quarterback at Indiana, whose practices looked like games. Then there is LaDainian Tomlinson, who never missed a practice in five years with Cam and ran every single play to the end zone. He ran so far that the coaches moved the drill closer to the goal line just to keep practice moving.
Cam added a Michael Jordan quote to every NFL playbook he wrote: if you do not practice like you play, you are only practicing to get worse. But smart practice also includes rest. Early at Michigan, he says, the team practiced so hard before bowl games that it was spent by kickoff. For a business owner, the lights coming on might be a listing presentation or an interview. Do not walk into it exhausted. Brad sums it up with one of his favorite lines: preparation creates separation.
What Does Winning Look Like After a Career in Coaching?
Cam says he used to stack faith, family, and football vertically, but now sees them side by side and connected. He and his wife have been married 38 years. Watching coaches like Tony Dungy step away, he decided around 55 that staying in coaching would cost him the chance to be the father he wanted to be, and that was a non-negotiable. He joined his wife in real estate, where their opposite strengths make a great partnership.
Winning now means time with his family, control of his own schedule, making his health a priority, and volunteering in his community, including as a marshal at the U.S. Open. He sends his virtual flowers to his mom, who taught him to treat people kindly, and to his stepfather, whose loyalty to his family still inspires him. And to anyone he meets, he adds, "I'm going to learn more from you probably than you'll ever learn from me."
▶ Listen to the full episode
The Power of Preparation with Former NFL Coach Cam Cameron, on Student of the Game.
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