The Ringer NFL Show - 1. Atlanta | The Cam Chronicles

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

An upbringing based on God, family, and football turns Cam into a high school phenom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're listening to this episode and don't want to wait till next week to hear where the story goes, head over to Spotify. All episodes of the Cam Chronicles are available for you to binge for free right now in the Ringer NFL show feed. We're sure we can't follow the instructions. Here we go. Move up. It's 9 a.m. on a.m. on a.m. January Saturday in Atlanta. I'm on a football field at Lakewood Stadium. Parents are shivering in nearly empty stands and their teenage sons go through drills. This group of nervous-looking boys and they hit the jackpot.

It's the chance of a lifetime. I mean, really? Cam Newton? NFL MVP, Heisman trophy winner, national superstar. He's going to be doing the coaching and selecting who among them will compete in football tournaments across the country at the highest level of summertime youth ball. But it's odd. For the first 30 minutes of practices,

run ladder drills and curl through route trees, Cam is nowhere to be seen, at his own clinic, no less. That is, until suddenly. Cam emerges, it seems, completely out of nowhere, donning green sunglasses in a matching varsity jacket in the middle of the field. He's absolutely massive,

as big as he looks on television. He's holding one of his babies, chosen by the hand. Then he's bouncing around from group to group of teenage boys. yelling and getting everybody hyped, an explosion of boisterous energy dancing the hits by Drake and Future. I'm here on invitation from Cam's daddy, Cecil. And truthfully, this felt like the moment

I've been waiting for for months. I thought, with Cecil's blessing, I might finally be able to crack the cold that was the mystery of Cam Newton's life. Cam's always been interesting to me. For one, there's very little known about the intricacies of his life. How is that possible for such a high-profile athlete?

For another, how did this black man break the glass ceiling of American athletics and cross over into becoming a cultural icon for nearly a decade? Those privileges aren't usually reserved for people who look like us. And, as a staff writer at the ringer covering the intersection of race politics and sports, hell, as a black boy born to the blocks in North Philly, I was skeptical of some of the treatment he had received from the press. I wondered how the pressures of being a heavily scrutinized black quarterback weighed on him. I wanted to understand him better, so I reached out to Cecil to arrange an interview. Now I was preparing to meet Cam for the first time, in his home city, in his element. In the middle of the day, Cecil walks me onto the field to finally meet Cam. I look up at Cam as I shake his hand.

He flashes that famously brilliant smile. You can practically hear it through the recording. Hey. How you doing? Cam New. How are you? Tyler, Tyler, Tarn. Tell him about yourself, sir.

Yeah, I work for the ringer. We're doing a documentary on you. So. Cam's huge smile completely drops. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got you after this. Mm-hmm. I got you after this.

Cam immediately goes back to coaching and casually avoids both me and my producer care for the rest of the day. It's all came face changed, didn't you? I'm cutting all egos. Egos. At 15 years old, you ain't got no ego. Damn, looks like I ain't getting that much closer to Cam than that. Seems like we ain't cracking that cold. At least not today.

After a full day of practice at Lakewood, the boys, who I imagine are exhausted from working their asses off while trying to keep their cool around a national superstar all day, walk off the field. For a moment, Cam is alone in the center of the field, throwing a tiny rainbow-colored football back and forth with chosen. I decided to approach Cam one more time as he starts walking to his car. At many turns in his career, especially the last few years,

Can's been reluctant to give interviews. And so as I walk up to him, I'm pretty surprised he doesn't try to dodge me like he has so many linebackers. Instead, he decides that he has five minutes to spare. I'm my whole career to be in Charlotte. There's a lot of misconception, a lot of things that's been in the media

that hasn't been organically made by me. But I feel like Charlotte has become a part of my family, has become a part of my life and my growth. And I want to be the quarterback that's leading the team to victory when they won the Super Bowl. Listening to the tape now is kind of sad. Almost three months after our conversation, Cam was released by the Panthers,

the team that drafted him in 2011. He was a free agent for the first time in his career. Then free agency came and went, and then the draft. And no team made a play for Cam. It was like he was a ghost this offseason. There were whispers about him landing in Washington, in Chicago, and Cleveland, maybe Los Angeles. But by June, he still didn't have a team.

Some of this could be explained by the circumstances. The pandemic prevented teams from bringing players in for medicals. But plenty of other quarterbacks still got calls to join clubs. Still, for a while, it seemed like we might have seen the last to Cam Newton. Imagine that. It was as if the entire league had decided that Cam, at 31 years old, had nothing to offer an NFL team anymore. I had given up thinking Cam might land on a roster before training camp.

But then something unexpected happened. Cam signed with the New England Patriots. The football world laughed and rolled their eyes at how Patriots head coach Bill Belichick managed to pull off or might end up being the coup of the 2020 season. As for me, all I could think was, how did we get here? I didn't get a whole lot more from Cam during that chat on the field. I couldn't shake the feeling that there's still so much we don't know or understand about him. But even if Cam wasn't all of a sudden invite me to hang out in a cigar bar and open about his career in life the way I hope,

that's all right. Because I realized I was in the perfect place to start pulling their threads, to start unraveling the mystery around this enigmatic figure, to understand everything we didn't know about Cam Newton, right here in Atlanta, Georgia, where his life began. This is the Cam Chronicles. I'm Talar Times. My name is Cecil Newton, Sr. I am Cam's father.

P-O-P-Pops, I built can. He'll tell you I built him. And everybody else who know me know I built him. As a young man, Cecil lived and breathed football. He played at Savannah State University, a historically black college in Georgia. He was also a church-going man. I surrendered my life to Christ at age 21

in my junior year of college. And, you know, I walked strictly with God. He met his wife, Jackie, at a service at her father's Pentecostal church. Cecil walked in and saw Jackie playing the drums with a twin sister. They were in the groove. Jackie and Cecil got married. They had their first son, Cecil Jr. And about three years later, on May 11, 1989, they had another boy.

His name was Cameron Jarrell Newton. I'm not sure the time of day, but I was there. In fact, I cut the umbrella cord. He weighed 10 pounds, nine ounces. Biggest thing in the nursery. Nine years later, Cam's brother Kalin was born. As Cecil describes it, he and Jackie raised the typical black southern family and one that would be run on religion and football.

Cecil was the church's bishop. So the Newton boys were always in the house of prayer. Little Cam sang in the choir and did praise dancing. He went to vacation Bible study. You know, I wonder how Cam took to those teachings. Did he have a choice? I loved my kids, but I was a straightforward kind of no-nonsense guy. That's all we knew to teach our kids was Christianity.

I'm a pastor. I'm not in prison. I'm not on drugs. I don't beat my wife. I've been with my wife 34 years. I'm teaching him righteousness, how to really be a man. I'm his living example of what a leadership be. While Cesar was teaching his son to be morally tough,

he started to notice that Camm was all. also physically strong. But he was emotional and sensitive, easily bothered. His rough and tumbled, free spirit, and nature, combined with his sensitivity, produced some dramatic incidents. Let's say he was about nine years old, ten. We was at one of the former members' house, and they had four by four ATV vehicles.

Cam, three or four of them on the vehicle, horse playing around, scouring around. He cuts himself somewhere in the groin area, upper thigh, something like that. It was a gas. He had to get stitches. But the scream that he from his voice when I told him he had to go to the doctor, oh, my God. He screams as if I'm sawing his leg off without anesthesia.

That was a death cry. Because shortly before that, my father had expired. And he just equated, anytime you go to the hospital, you never come home. So in his final quest to the family, just tell the family I love him. And I'm saying goodbye. We laugh about it now, but he was in tears just, this is it. I'm gone. When I get in this car to go to the doctor, they're not going to see me anymore.

When Cam was seven, he had a habit of sucking his thumb. Caesar tried pouring hot sauce on the boy's thumb. That ain't worked. Caesar tried to use tape. That ain't work. One day, Cesar found a perfect remedy. His older brother and myself were fishermen. I come home one afternoon.

I called a large mouth bass, probably about a nine-pounder. Cam is sitting on the sofa watching TV, thumb in his mouth. So I made Cam come downstairs and pick up the catfish with his sucking the thumb hand. He's screaming, kind of equivalent to what he was doing when we were taking him to the hospital. Didn't want to pick it up, but I admonished him if he dropped that fish, he was going to get the chastening of his lifetime. He didn't drop it. He held it for about about two minutes, three minutes.

I was using the psychology of used that same hand to hold that fish, and he didn't suck his thumb anymore from that point on. When Cam was seven, he started playing Pop Warner football. The damn boy was already 70 pounds. He would always just barely make the weight. He would not eat on Fridays at school in fear of not making the wait the following day. Once he got in the field, Cam stood out amongst the youngsters. He did so well, he surprised his pops.

You know, he was not timid toward contact. He used to love to run the ball. He could throw. By that time, I had developed a throwing technique for him. He was always available for workout, push-ups, sit-ups, running the mile, pull-ups. Whatever I told him to do, he did. Tisa wanted to mold a grittiness into his son. I never say die attitude, no matter how young he was.

Tisa would stop the car and tell Cam to beat him home, having Cam sometimes run a half miles of the house, out running a car if he could. I could wake Cam up on a Saturday morning and said, Kim, we're going to work out of the field, get the ball, bring the jump rope, get your cleats, let's go. He wouldn't even grimace. He was driven. He trusted me and he trusted himself. himself, that that Navy SEAL mentality.

The weekends were not for rest or the weary. It was God and it was football. Here's Cam talking to ESPN about his memories from that time. I can count probably on my two hands how many times I really got to just wake up, eat Cheerios, watch cartoons without my father saying, no, you're going to work with me. As Cam got older, Cecil kept a watchful eye over who his son chose as his friends. He imposed a strict curfew and didn't let Cam get caught up with people he deemed as nobody's. But Cecil's heavy-handed nature couldn't prevent Cam from being a goofy, fun-loving child.

Cecil started getting calls from Cam's teachers. Cam started a water balloon fight after school. Cam rolled the teacher's chair down the hall when they weren't looking. Cam started a fool fight in the cafeteria. Cam locked one of his classmates in the closet. He wasn't a bad, bully type kid. He was just silly. corny jokes, stuff like that. And I'm sure you can assume by now that Cam's antics didn't quite fly in Cecil's house.

Caesar took a hard-line attitude toward discipline in his boys. But for once, he couldn't come up with the punishment to keep Cam in line. He didn't know what to do. By the time Cam was in sixth grade, Jackie devised the plan to deal with their son. She says he wanted to be the clown, he wanted to be a show off and be seen. every Friday you're going to dress up. We're going to let him see you. You're going to wear a shirt and tie, dress clothes.

That was a mockery of sorts, because typical kids come to school, tennis shoes, blue jeans or t-shirt. He's coming in with a full-fledged suit and tie and all of that. Cecil thought Cam would get embarrassed, that his friends would tease him enough that he'd come home frantic and apologetic, emotional, like that boy who thought he died in a hospital from a flesh wound.

It worked to the opposite. He liked it. Surprisingly, he took to it genuinely and honestly. On Thursday, he was already ironed his shirt and slacks for the following day. What Cecil started to realize was that Cam was on a path to becoming his own man, crafting a lane all his own. Some people said he was discovered at the Friday night lights. In 2003, Cam enrolled at Westlake High School.

CJ, Cecil Jr., was the start on the varsity team at the time. So at first, Cam was known as CJ's little brother, the skinny quarterback prone to mistakes. He was always hanging out with the seniors on the team and leapfrog that awkward adolescent phase of freshman year. Coaches watched him sprout from a skinny backup cube beater something else entirely. He came back as junior year. He had grown about three or four inches, gained about 15, 20 pounds, and it was like, oh, my God, stars born. That's Dallas Island. He was Cam's high school football coach.

The man with a job of turning Georgia's latest talent into a superstar. And it was working. The coaches gave Cam the keys to the offense. What could it hurt? He did a playbook like his own personal Bible anyway. Soon enough, stories started to roll. out of Westlake about the phenom the Lions had. Cam would get nose and nose with his lineman if they jumped off sides,

asserting his command for perfection. His pocket presence was calm for a teenager, his feet, quiet behind the line. Coaches would whisper to each other, can you believe what that boy just did? Cam had matured into what Cecil wanted him to be, the gridiron warrior, the turf titan, a man among boys. These cliches that are pervasive in our tales about football, the stories from the Friday night lights that are told throughout the South.

Canne fulfilled that ideal. He was a legend at Westlake and the proud of any father with big-time football dreams. Cam wasn't just a delightful presence on the football field. He was also, you know, the Cam Newton Weevall come to know, the beaming grin and bright demeanor. He developed that Colgate smile football fans will fall in love with. In high school, that smile made classmates swoon in the hallways between classes. His free spirit would light up the cafeteria when he stood at top tables and made everybody do the wave.

Here was a boy, not yet fully grown, but massive for a teenager at 6'5 and 225 pounds, flashing that smile and thumping them tables like it's a session at Jamboree. This was Cam away from Cecil, away from the constraints of football and family. He was free. He was fun. He was Cam. Despite his shenanigans, Cam was ready when one of the biggest games he was he, his high school career came along, the battle of the best Georgia quarterbacks. Cam Newton versus Eric Berry, who went on to play safety for the University of Tennessee and was the top five NFL draft pick. It was a clash between two of the best prep players in the state.

It made an atmosphere of a Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali fight. It was a game for the ages within the high school football community in North Georgia. Cam's Westlake would end up losing the Barry's Creek side, but it's a moment I think of with a grin when we're watching the tape. Two future SEC stars, and NFL All-Pro sharing the same field under the lights. And let's think about where Cam is at for a beat. This is Southwest Atlanta, one of the main streets of black culture nationally. Cam grew up during the growth of some of the best years of Southern rap, the Dungeon Family,

So So Death Records, Outcast, TLC, T, T, I, Ludacris, Goody Mob. Hank Aaron has a home on Cascade Road, just like the rapper Creflot Dollar. Atlanta's famed activism hummed here too. Andrew Young, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr., live near Westlake High School. Atlanta's current mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and former mayor, Cassim Reed, live off Cascade Road in the Guild for Forest Homes. Cam's high school was in the district of Congressman John Lewis,

the freedom fighter who clashed with virulent racism during the civil rights movement. Atlanta, a broad way of blackness in the South, A heartbeat that propels our culture forward from athletics to music to politics comes from these blocks. The world was open for any type of black dream here. The author Tyari Jones captured the breath and ambition and achievement that was possible in Atlanta. And her story titled Caramel, Jones wrote, This is something that never ceases to amaze me about Atlanta. Whatever you can think of, there's a black person doing it.

Probably up and down Cascade Road. crackhead CEOs and everything in between. And now Cecil's boy, through football, could make a claim to this world of wonder. Rivals listed Cam as the number two dual threat quarterback in America, a five-star prospect in the 28th best player in the country. Eventually, the biggest college football program started calling, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi State, Maryland, University of Mississippi,

Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, and Florida. But it was kind of weird. There was only three schools wanted Cam as a quarterback. That was Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi State. Everybody else wanted them as a tight end. This baffled many around Cam. It was the same racist logic that impugns many black pocket passes.

Academics like Jay Coakley and Lou Moore have described these practices as racial stacking. Coaches, scouts, and white gatekeepers in sports like football or soccer routinely placed black talent and positions that have been stereotyped as more, quote, athletic roles, as opposed to, quote, thinking roles. Black quarterbacks are often asked to switch positions, but just because he big as hell doesn't mean he'd be a good tight end. How foolish can you be? Hadn't they seen the tape? Cam was a quarterback, a damn good one. He'd make sure prospective coaches knew it. Cesar would too. Father and son had a plan.

The Hollywood of the South. The University of Florida. Gainesville, the Gators, Urban Meyer and Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Man, this was the big time. And Cecil, in his own way, of course, had a blueprint for getting Cam to the pinnacle of college football. I actually called Coach Dan Mullen at the time,

and I told him that I was going to bring my son to Florida. This is one of those classic Cesar's. Cecil tells, man. Cecil, Cesar Newton, just goes ahead and picks up the phone and calls the offensive coordinator at the University of Florida. Who does that? But there's Cecil picking up the phone, and he's like, I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Dan. When I bring my son there, if he is the best quarterback prospect, you offer him on the spot.

Nothing else said. If he's not, we'll ride out of that at the fight. following day, and you'll never have to hear from me again. Not a bad idea, right? Cesar would drive to Gainesville and deliver Cam to his handpicked dynasty. Sure, this might sound just a tad bit over the top, but Cam's talent was undeniable after his junior campaign, and by the fall of his senior year, he committed to the Gators.

He left Westlake as one of the most decorated high school athletes in the country, a five-star recruit, a Florida commit, one of the best quarterbacks in America, a future star. His jersey hanging from the rafters, retired, and daring any new prospect to try and be like camp. Only a handful of boys ever left Westlake with the promise to play in the NFL, and only one of them heaved the ball with unparalleled arm strength, towed at the rock like a blossoming back, and had the gumption to take on anything in his path. That was number two.

Cameron, Jarrell Newton. While I was at the football clinic at Lakewood, Cecil invited me to church the next day. Let's call it a consolation prize for his son's reluctance to talk. Luckily, I stayed prepared. Your boy always packs a suit. So on a Sunday morning in January, my producer Kara and I are sitting within the lavender walls

of Holy Zion Center of Deliverance in noon in Georgia, about 40 miles southwest of Atlanta. Here, Cecil is the bishop. He stands up on the altar dressed in a candy maroon blazer with huge blue and white collars. His muster-colored turtleneck is stuffed underneath yet another patterned shirt, which is partially unbutty. But the place was jamming. Why don't you put your hand together just so thank you, Lord. A lot to be thankful for, I know I do.

And I take God's grace and mercy not for granted. at the service about 30 minutes late. He appears the same as he's been described as a boy, cheerful, massive. He wears a tweed overcoat in an olive bowtie and vest. He's carrying one of his children over his shoulder and holding another by the hand as he bounces up to the front row where his mother sits. His free-form locks dance atop his head. He sings as they do.

He claps like they do. Here he's a brother, a father, a member of a church. community. No one bothersome. No one begs for autographs. Hell, excuse me, God, people barely know he's in the building half the time. That is until he cranes his neck backwards and booms. Praise the Lord. Cecil begins the service by inviting everyone to say good morning to the neighbor seated next to them. And then, it's church time. I want to invite a quick guest here to give us a synopsis of why he's here today. He is my friend as of now until the documentary comes out. We'll figure that out later.

But he's going to give us a summary of what's really going on in his head and in his heart and what his attendance today is about. Would you welcome Mr. Tyler Times to hire? If you listen carefully, you can hear me saying, oh no, repeatedly to Kara. The last thing I expected was to be addressed in Cecil Newton's entire Congress. congregation. Thankfully, my mama brought me up in the church as a boy, so I could figure something out on the fly. Good morning, good morning. My name is Tyler. I'm here to do a documentary on Cam and his family

his entire life. Standing at the altar next to Cecil, in front of all his congregants, in front of Cam and his kids, I try to explain why I'm here in Noonan, to peer behind the mystery of Cam's smile, to pull back the curtain of his media silence, and come out of his, with some clarity on his life's narrative. Apparently, my explanation wasn't good enough for Cecil. Help me tell him, Chuck. He said, hold on Tyler. He's saying all right thing now, y'all,

but what's your thought thus for? Tell me, because I'm Bumpy Johnson. I'm gonna send some folk at you if you don't do me right. Cecil's referring to himself as Bumpet Johnson. The notorious Harlem gangster and crime boss. Does Cam's daddy think he's equivalent to an American gangster from half a century ago? Is Cecil threatened to come after me? In the front row, Cam is laughing, along with the rest of the church.

You get information. Email, Twitter, Snapchat, whatever we can do to ring your ear just in case. Cecil's tone is jovial. His remarks intended to be a jab at a journalist trying to tell a story about a private man and his family. But it feels like a warning of sorts. And it's by standing up on his altar, watching Cam and his family in their element, in their church home, that I realize my responsibility in telling this story. Cann exhibits a level of comfort here that I haven't seen from him outside of the football field.

He's himself. So Cesar's defiant posture makes sense. All he wants is to protect was his, his family, his son, his space. Before I lead to church, the good bishop offers me a bit of advice. No, I just want you to just tell a true story of what you've taken in in person, not what you read, not what other people have said in their assessment. He's a private person. You know, he's not so hypersensitive about it.

whether you like him or not. He's comfortable in his own skin. I'm glad he's like that, because if he wasn't, you know, he probably would have faded long before now. This is not a front. And hopefully by now you guys have seen who we are. That's who Cam is. That's who our family is.

I've spent several months retracing Cam's life, trying to figure out who he is. I've traveled across several states, speaking with dozens of sources, including former coaches, teammates, friends, and members of the press who see him at his highest and its lowest. In the support that brought Cam back up from those lows was palpable in that church in Georgia. This is the universe Cecil is created for his family, and Cam is the sun around which everything orbits.

It's the dynamic between father and son that holds it all together. There is no Cam Newton without Cecil Newton. No Cecil, as we know, without Cam. Cecil is the director of a major motion picture. And Cam is his star. I was the most influential person in Cam's life. Then. And now.

And what we would all begin to find out, as I did over a few days in Georgia, is that nothing comes before the Newton family vision of success. They crafted it all their own in a corner of Atlanta, on the field at Westlake, in the pews in Noonan. And on what was a fast track to Gainesville, Florida. and then to the rest of the world. This season on the Cam Chronicles. We loved it, Florida.

That was our genuine first love. It was the Hollywood of the South. I don't know, I just, I can't even imagine UF keeping Cam over Tim Tebow. We talk about Cam Noon as the great what if. He was broken. Leaving Florida, he's broken. Junior College is a different breed. We literally practiced in the barn shed, whatever it was, with the cows, horse shit on the ground, pigs running around.

He told the other team, coaches and everybody, that he was there to kick their butt, and the women of Tyler would be rolling with him after he did. I remember on the headsets just saying, hey, that guy just won the husband trophy. Alabama has this belief that it's not supposed to happen. you know, that Cam Newton is not supposed to happen. Alabama believes that it is its prerogative to dominate all of college football, and certainly its lesser rival.

When I die, if any publication writes an obituary of me, it was a Paul Feinbaum, Kama, who took the most famous call in sports radio history when Harvey Updike called on January 26, 2011. Most often, college football heroes are really humble black running backs, or like beloved white quarterbacks. Cam had said at the podium in Charlotte,

I'm a black quarterback that scares people. Cam broke his body for himself, his legacy to win and for Carolina. So yes, football breaks your body, but he did it willingly. I don't bite my tongue for nobody. Everybody know how I rock and roll, and I'm just more comfortable that way. The Cam Chronicles was written and reported by me, Tyler R. Times. and edited by Connor Nevins.

The show was produced by Kara Cornhaver, Isaac Lee, and Noah Malale, and sound designed by Isaac Lee. If you're listening to this episode and don't want to wait till next week to hear where the story goes, head over to Spotify. All episodes of the Cam Chronicles are available for you to binge for free right now in the Ringer NFL show feed.