His fingerprints already were all over the roster.
When the Campbell head coaching post opened up amidst this most recent Football Championship Subdivision coaching cycle, Braxton Harris had unique perspective.
He had been the recruiting coordinator for the Camels under previous coach Mike Minter, when the Harris-led recruiting efforts helped Campbell amass some of the highest-rated recruiting classes in modern FCS recruiting.
Yet, Harris also had just returned home to his native Texas and led Houston Christian University to unprecedented success in his first term atop the program.
“Campbell has always been a special place,” Harris told FootballScoop, “and there was always a family piece of it. It had been a really good place for our family; my wife and kids had really liked it here.
“So, No. 1, it was a place we felt we could go back to, and those are rare in this business. No. 2, when you look at the administration here at Campbell, Hannah Bazemore our athletics director and all of our leadership team, their vision for what the program can be.
“Campbell football started in 2008, and it was a non-scholarship program. Then it’s gone from the Big South to the CAA in less than 20 years. It’s not only where they want to go but where they are going. Campbell has lived those things out in the goals and vision.”
At his football heart, Harris is a vision guy. He spent years fortifying Campbell’s roster with a vision for the program that resonated with players from California to Florida; Arkansas to Michigan; Washington, D.C., to the Carolinas.
But Harris nearly saw double when he returned to Buies Creek, N.C.; the Camels had a half-dozen offensive linemen who remained in the program. There were additional rosters holes that required filling as well after Minter resigned a week before Christmas.
“When we walked in the building after we got the job in January, we only had six scholarship offensive linemen,” a former quarterback at NCAA Division III powerhouse Mary Hardin-Baylor, where Harris also carved his start in coaching. “Coach Minter had resigned, so that opened up the Transfer Portal. A lot of guys had chosen to leave before we got the job, and we weren’t able to bring in kids at mid-year because school had already started. But we got through spring healthy, roster-wise, and now we’ve got a full roster that’s going to help us a ton.”
With an added layer of authenticity from the time he had spent already recruiting for the Camels, Harris helped Campbell bolster the OL group to 15 players; they added 23 newcomers this summer – 20 of them transfers and a trio of priority high school recruits.
As Harris and his quickly assembled coaching staff worked to replenish the roster, he hearkened back to a mindset first established some 15 years ago in his earliest days as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at his alma mater.
Barnstorming alongside veteran Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy came to mind.
“I think having a vision for recruiting is critical, and my opportunities when I started were at D-3 level,” Harris said. “You had to do something to differentiate yourself. If I walked into a high school and a D-2 school walked in, we weren’t the same. So, I was always looking for what’s that next step, how do you do something different than anybody else. I credit a lot of things that I’ve been able to be fortunate to be a part of due to the experiences I’ve had, finding ways to differentiate your program and be ahead of the curve.
“We really kind of started the traveling camps with Oklahoma State and Mike Gundy.”
Harris remembered being involved in one of college football’s first mega-camps, before NCAA regulations switched to prohibit teams from hosting such events across state lines.
“We had a mega camp and had 300 kids at that camp,” Harris remembered. “A lot of things have come from having to be able to figure out creative ways to get the job done.
“We did traveling camps with just Oklahoma State for a while until the rule came down that changed that.”
Adversity means opportunity; difficulty is embraced.
The schedule is demanding – an opener at Group of 5 powerhouse Liberty, then at Southern Conference program Western Carolina before launching CAA play on the road at Rhode Island.
Bring it.
The No. 1 piece of the growth is what we just talked about, within the building everybody wants to be at Campbell, everybody sees it as an opportunity,” Harris said. “Kids are smiling, excited about the future. They see new guys arrive and they’re excited; there’s not that division where some guys don’t want to compete and don’t want what’s best for the whole of the program.
“That’s the biggest thing culturally that we’ve been able to see shift.”
Which, in turns, lends Harris hope for the future – in mere weeks when the season kicks off and beyond.
“I hope to see a team that starts fast and finishes strong,” said Harris, who has seen Campbell’s fast starts dissolve into four consecutive losing seasons in the year prior to his return. “We’ve done that in the past, started fast, but we’ve got to be able to win the fourth quarter in football games, and both know that’s not by talent but the character of who you are.
“We talk about GOOD, the NAVY S.E.A.L. motto. When a tough situation comes, and they’re going to come whether that’s an injury or adversity in a game, that’s an opportunity for someone to step up.
“Everything we do, we say ‘Good.’”
The blueprint, like the fingerprints of the head coach, already is there.