Tommie Campbell may have thrown away his pro football career.

For those close to Calgary Stampeder All-Star Tommie Campbell, that's the greatest fear — that somehow, a man on the top of his game in the Canadian Football League has found a way to ruin his professional sports career, going from the locker room to the big lock up.

"This has just knocked us on our fannies — we're all just devastated," says John Luckhardt, a retired American football coach who played a significant role in Campbell's success.

"If there's any truth to this, it's just really dispiriting to hear."

On Tuesday, police in Campbell's hometown of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania told reporters the Stampeders defensive back had been arrested on drug charges, after the 29-year-old turned himself in at the police station.

Earlier that day officers had gone to the home of Campbell's mother, a brick bungalow frequently decorated with homemade signs proudly supporting Tommie, the latest batch hanging during November's Grey Cup game.

According to Aliquippa Police Chief Don Couch, officers believed the CFL star was using his mom's home as a base to sell drugs in the off-season.

Being a big deal in Aliquippa, an economically-depressed borough of Pittsburgh still struggling with the loss of the local steel industry, Campbell's arrest was top news, and Couch made a statement to local television reporters:

"Tommie is known and loved in this town, we all are very proud of his success in the upper levels of football, in professional football, but unfortunately when this happens we have to do our job," Couch told WPXI.

"On the one hand, you have this local kid who did good and was in the NFL. On the other hand, I have a job to do and selling drugs is a crime."

Campbell is denying the drug charges, and his lawyer says the former NFL player, who spent five years with the Tennessee Titans and the Jacksonville Jaguars, will fight to clear his name.

His former coach wants that to happen almost as much as Campbell surely does.

It was John Luckhardt who helped lift Campbell up from his previous low-point in life, after the star high-school player — a first-team All-State wide receiver and safety — managed to flunk his way out of a University of Pittsburgh scholarship, and then a second-chance stint at Division II Edinboro University.
http://www.calgarysun.com/2017/01/25...ach-devastated