Cam Newton
A Biography of the Electrifying Quarterback
Copyright © 2017 Benjamin Southerland
All rights reserved. Neither this book nor any portion thereof may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission. Published in the United States of America.
Cover photo by Keith Allison is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 / Modified from original.
Visit Benjamin Southerland’s website at benjaminsoutherland.com.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Chosen Newton
Chapter 2: A Father’s Son
Chapter 3: A Swampy Start
Chapter 4: Humility
Chapter 5: Eye of the Tiger
Chapter 6: A Newbie in Carolina
Chapter 7: Sophomore Slump
Chapter 8: Third Time’s the Charm
Chapter 9: One Forward, Two Back
Chapter 10: MVP
Chapter 11: A Controversial Figure
Chapter 12: Cam—The Man
About the Author
Chapter 1: Chosen Newton
It’s December 24, 2015, the day before Christmas, and Cam Newton has just left practice to care for what reports are calling “A personal matter.” Panthers head coach Ron Rivera assures the media “It’s nothing injury-related,” but fans are still skeptical. This is a man who, the previous year, sustained a potentially deadly car accident, and they just want to make sure that the star of their team, and the lifeline of their town, is OK.
Three days later, the Panthers will lose their first game of the season, an away game against the Atlanta Falcons, dashing their hopes of an undefeated year and falling to a “disappointing” 14-1. In actuality, the game will mean nothing, and the Panthers will still enter the playoffs with a first-round bye and home-field advantage. More importantly, in the coming weeks, more will come out on his mysterious exit from practice: on Christmas Eve, Cam welcomed his first child into the world, a son he named Chosen.
And just like that, Cam Newton embarks on a journey far bigger than any that’s preceded it—and we’re talking about a man who’s made three Pro Bowls and three playoff berths in five seasons, signed a huge contract exceeding $100 million at the beginning of 2015, and has become a superstar in the sports world; before that, the number one draft pick, the national championship with Auburn; back further still, to the struggles at Florida, the controversies, the year at a junior college, the unknowns; a star at Georgia’s Westlake High; and then, as a boy, the tenuous but ultimately formative relationship with his father; and, finally, when he took his first breaths, as his son does now. To understand who Cam Newton is, we must first understand the path he took to get to this point, to be in this moment.
Chapter 2: A Father’s Son
Cameron Jerrell Newton was born on May 11, 1989, in Atlanta, Georgia, to parents Cecil and Jackie. Cecil had played small school ball at Savannah State and had pro ambitions, but after failing to make a pro roster after his college years, he resolved to make the dream a vicarious one. That meant that from the days Cam and his older brother, Cecil Jr., came into this world, the end goal was quite clear. The important thing is, unlike some father-son relationships where the father seems to be pushing his son against his will, far further than he ever wanted to go, this wasn’t the case for Cam—he wanted to be great just as much as his father wanted it for him.
“I grew up trying to be like my idols, and one of the main people in my life was my father,” says Cam. “He played football. Everybody wants to be like their father.”
Cam did everything he could to be like his dad growing up. At an age where most kids have dreams of becoming a firefighter or a police officer, Cam knew that his calling was football—and it helped that he had the genetics and the upbringing to facilitate this path.
Though Cecil Newton Sr. had been a bit too small to compete at the professional level, both Cam and his older brother, Cecil Jr., were of formidable size from a young age. By the time he was eight years old, Cam was nearly five feet tall and weighed about 100 pounds. He’d routinely skip meals before pee-wee football weigh-in so that he’d be light enough to play in the games.
But it wasn’t until middle school that Cam’s talents truly came to the forefront. Puberty began to set in, and the already-large Cam grew exponentially. In spite of his size, his glasses and floppy afro offered a more affable, goofy appearance than the superior athletic prowess that lay dormant in his preeminently large preteen frame—in fact, they gave off the impression of a kid more interested in reading novels than a playbook. As it turns out, success in the former can lead to the latter, but this was still quite a ways off. It was evident early on, though, that Cam was quite bright.
“Learning came naturally to Cam,” says his Camp Creek Middle School teacher Marie Caldwell, whom Cam comes to visit every year. “It was difficult to get him to focus and settle down because he had a lot of energy. The same level of energy you see on the football field today is the same level we saw in the Camp Creek hallways. He was a child who liked to have a good time and laugh.”
Cam’s mother, Jackie, is credited with making sure that Cam kept his grades up and maintained a good standing in the classroom—there was to be no football, or recreational activities of any kind, before he had finished his homework.
Of course, the middle school years are also when great athletic talents are first recognized, as this is the first period during which athletes can play for school-associated squads. Unfortunately for Cam, Camp Creek didn’t field a football squad, so that meant he’d have to be content with the pee-wee leagues until he reached high school. But that was just fine for Cam, because he was going to find his way to prove himself one way or another—and that meant telling anyone who would listen around the Camp Creek halls that he was going to be a professional football player someday.
“Even though we didn’t have a football team, I remember students buzzing, even back then, about his football ability,” says Newton’s middle school basketball coach, Twayne Eddie.
But there would be plenty of time to make anyone who was skeptical at that point a believer, because Cam’s years at Westlake High School were still to come. But Cam began high school not nearly as physically imposing as he’d seemed during his pee-wee days: though markedly taller than his peers, he was quite skinny, and skeptics asked themselves if this was truly the gridiron godsend that so many had purported him to be.
Plus: this was Westlake High School. That may not mean much to the uninitiated, but for anyone who follows football recruiting or is from the South, the name Westlake elicits instant recognition. The school’s fielded nearly a dozen NFL football players in its history, and is a hotbed for talent in the greater Atlanta area—we’re talking names like Adam “Pacman” Jones (2002) and Eric Berry (2007), perennial Pro Bowlers and powerhouse players. Plus, his brother, Cecil Jr., was making a huge name for himself as one of the most talented offensive linemen Georgia high school football had ever seen.
But who was this cocky, lanky freshman quarterback who’d just arrived on the scene?
Throughout his first year of high school and into his second, the answer to the question remained to be seen. Though Cam impressed his head coach early on in his freshman year and was one of the few first-year players to receive the high honor of getting bumped up to the varsity squad, he remained firmly planted on the bench for that inaugural season. Early in his sophomore year, the starting quarterback sustained an injury, so Cam was sent into a game late in the fourth quarter, down a touchdown and with everything riding on his shoulders.
Would this be the start of the legend of Cam Newton?
No—he would fumble a snap, ironically from his brother, and that would be the end of the game.
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The hype train would temporarily come to a halt as far as the Cam Newton story was concerned. But as high school coach Dallas Allen recalls, it was evident even at his young age that “Cam’s the kind of kid where things just roll off his back like water.” And as we know, this minor hiccup would dry right up like a summer’s rain—and it would be quite far from the end of his journey.
The summer after his sophomore year was one of great physical transformation for Cam. He added three inches of height to his lanky frame, but he also tacked on 20 pounds of muscle, which served to transform him into one of the most formidable dual-threat quarterbacks high school football has ever seen. In a way, there’s some sympathy to be bestowed upon the Newtons during that summer: the groceries required to fuel the exponential growth of young Cam must have cost an arm and a leg, a fee that’s surely been recouped now—but more on that later.
Cam stepped on to the Westlake High School campus on the first day of his junior year looking like a new man—less like the lanky, slightly nerdy kid with glasses and a floppy fro, and more like the Adonis that we know him as today. He now towered over the student body at six feet four inches, and his 230-pound frame was almost purely comprised of muscle. If any members of rival high school football squads had for some strange reason been roaming the Westlake grounds that morning on the first day of the 2005-06 school year, they would have been shaking in their sneakers.
Though the squad would never clinch an elusive state championship—more a testament to the plethora of talented squads in the state of Georgia than any shortcoming on Cam’s part—the young Newton would finally take center stage as one of the most talented young recruits in the history of the sport. Between his junior and senior seasons, Cam tacked on another inch of height and another 10 pounds. During his senior season at Westlake, he threw for 2,166 yards, an impressive number, but hardly making a mark in the gaudy pages of the Georgia high school record books. Even so, even the most lackadaisical recruiters knew the talent was there. And all of them came knocking. Everyone wanted Cam. The trouble was, not everyone wanted him at quarterback.
Chapter 3: A Swampy Start
While most of the smaller schools didn’t dare tell Cam that they had a different vision for him position-wise, it was Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville who was the first to suggest that Cam might be better suited at tight end than quarterback. Unfortunately for Tuberville, who was known as a hard-nosed recruiter and coach, his stubbornness backfired, and this instantly sent Auburn to the bottom of the list. Not only did Cam have a vision of professional success for himself, but that vision also included certain parameters, and naturally, front and center on that list of criteria was him at the helm of the offense—as quarterback.
Right around this time, another young do-it-all quarterback was making a name for himself at the University of Florida—one Timothy Tebow. Inspired by the way Tim controlled his offense and also made huge plays on his own accord, Cam began to lean toward the University of Florida. It’s important to note here what this said about Cam and his desire to get better: Tebow still had two years of eligibility left, so Cam knew that he would likely not start until his junior year. He was willing to learn from a quarterback who he felt would be able to guide him in both an experiential and actual way, so that he might become a better quarterback for it. In essence, he didn’t want to just step in and play; rather, when he stepped into the game, he wanted to make sure that he was the absolute best.
Cam signed his letter of intent to become a Gator, and the stage seemed set for tutelage directly from the college game’s brightest star, which would ultimately manifest itself in Cam’s own superstardom once Tebow had moved on to the pro ranks. And early on, this is exactly how things unfolded—Cam beat out fellow freshman and blue-chip recruit John Brantley to be the designated backup to Tebow, and even saw action in five games during his first year. At the beginning of his sophomore year, Cam tweaked his ankle—the type of injury that would plague him off and on to a negligible degree throughout his career—and redshirted the rest of that season.
Chapter 4: Humility
And then, in November 2008, disaster—perhaps the first and only blot on Cam’s resume, and certainly the first up until that point. The course of events is shaky, not to mention the events themselves. What is known is that they involve a stolen laptop, the exchange of money, and, when it was all said and done, Cam tossing a laptop out of his dorm window.
The authorities claim that Cam had stolen this laptop; Cam claims that he bought it from another student, though the price was suspiciously low, so he probably should have been wary. Regardless, the tossing of it out the window is indisputable, and after this, the squeaky-clean reputation that Cam had acquired—deservedly so—was tarnished a bit. And, unfortunately, because of these events, his time at Florida came to an abrupt end—under his own guise, however. Cam announced to the media that he would be transferring from Florida three days before the Gators were due to play in the national championship game. But to where, we didn’t yet know.
Regarding the events, Cam was later quoted as saying, “I believe that a person should not be thought of as a bad person because of some senseless mistake that they made.” It’s an interesting point, and it’s one that can hold particular weight for a 19-year-old kid who’s at a new school in a new state and is just trying to figure things out.
That second chance would come in an unlikely location, and certainly a long way from a Division 1 powerhouse like Florida: Blinn College, a junior college in Texas, was where, in January of 2009, Cam would begin a long journey back. Far from an absolution of sins, many saw this as a sort of penance for Cam. But having learned from this debacle, Cam knew how lucky he was to have been given this second chance.
“I don’t know what I wanted to get out of Blinn,” says Cam. “I think I just wanted an opportunity.”
The opportunity Cam received extended past the gridiron, too—at Blinn, he was not only expected to lead a team, but he also had to do grueling work, like repainting the bleachers in the stadium and caring for the cows in the campus pasture. It was truly a hands-on experience, and one that would shape the player—and the man—that Cam was to become.
Cam and the rest of the Blinn squad endured grueling two-a-day fall practices, and afterward Cam would have a mandatory one-on-one meeting with his offensive coordinator, Ronny Feldman. This is how Cam learned to be the leader that he now is—he would take diligent notes from Feldman, and would log various learnings from each practice in his thick spiral-bound notebook. On the weekends, Cam and his teammates would jump in someone’s car and head to Dairy Queen, a weekly ritual that became the punctuation of the week.
In spite of this, Cam retained his signature swagger and smile, which were part of the essence of his personality. He was known to walk into the huddle, displaying those pearly whites, and before announcing the play, say to his teammates, “Right now, we’re gonna kick their butt—you with me or not?”
Once the season started, Cam’s combination of his old swagger and his new humility paid off: with Cam at the helm, the team simply could not lose. They capped an undefeated season with a junior college national championship, the icing on the cake for Cam’s tenure at Blinn.
One can only imagine how many chocolate-dipped ice cream cones and milkshakes they had later that night from Dairy Queen to celebrate.
While his history at Florida could never be absolved, it was certainly placed in the rearview mirror after his turnaround at Blinn. Once again, Cam went through the same recruitment process he had gone through after coming out of Westlake—but this time, he was far and away the most coveted prospect in his class, the only five-star recruit in the entire country. Though it came down to Oklahoma, Mississippi State, and Auburn, Cam decided to go with the Auburn Tigers, where he would have two remaining years of eligibility.
Let’s step back and examine the journey thus far: an exuberant, clever kid growing up outside of Atlanta; a high school football star; a formidabl
e backup to the nation’s “golden boy” at Florida; disaster, and then a learning experience, success, and a rise back to the top. This is where Cam Newton found himself when he arrived on the Auburn campus in 2010.
Chapter 5: Eye of the Tiger
Auburn is a school that has a rich history in football, but perhaps it’s brighter in the eyes of the fans than it is in the record books—it always seems as though in-state rivals Alabama get all the glory and the press. At least, it did until Cam got there.
Auburn head coach Gene Chizik had been reluctant to sign Cam Newton at first, not certain that immense success at the junior college level would translate to the Division 1 game. Fortunately, Cam Newton had a huge ally in his corner in the form of then-offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn.
“I joked that if we signed Cam, he’d be known as Cameron Malzahn,” Chizik reportedly said shortly after Cam began his tenure with the Tigers.
While there was to be no official name change, the play certainly proved that Malzahn knew exactly what he was talking about. The induction of Cam into the fold ended up being the greatest acquisition the Tigers had made in half a century. Though Auburn football is synonymous with success, it had fallen on a couple decades of stagnancy before Cam arrived, and hadn’t won a national championship—officially, at least, given the varying ranking of bowl games prior to an official “national championship” game—since 1957.
Cam was brought in to start, and that’s what he did from the onset. In his very first game in 2010, a home matchup against Arkansas State, he accounted for five total touchdowns and 250 yards of total offense, leading not only to a huge 52-26 victory, but also to SEC Offensive Player of the Week honors. He’d mimic those gaudy numbers a few weeks later against the Gamecocks of South Carolina, scoring five more TDs and accumulating 330 yards.
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