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<\/p>\nNEWBURY PARK, Calif. \u2014 On the first day of October, the smoke wafting out of the quad and into the evening air is not an emergency. It\u2019s a beacon. The Rock n Roll Burger tent has its flattop grills going, turning dozens and dozens of fresh beef patties into a catered dinner. There is a Newbury Park High School football game the following night. The program eats together today. No seconds until everyone has firsts, one of the moms announces.<\/p>\n
Varsity players queue up. Coaches apparently get to cut the line, which explains why Cam Rising is near the front.<\/p>\n
It does not begin to explain why he is here.<\/p>\n
One year prior, Rising was a two-time Rose Bowl quarterback for the University of Utah who\u2019d been given better preseason odds to win the Heisman Trophy than Travis Hunter, the ultimate winner of the award. He was a freewheeler with shoulder-length flow and a Creedence Clearwater Revival tune soundtracking his appearances at home games. He was 6 feet 2 and 220 pounds, staring down a shot at an NFL roster spot while preparing for a Week 7 matchup with Arizona State.<\/p>\n
It was the last college football game Rising would play. He is now, at 26 years old, the offensive coordinator for his high school alma mater. A severe hand injury switched the tracks.<\/p>\n
Rising is not the first to face this plight. High-performing athletes who can\u2019t perform anymore fall into a differently shaped world and have to do \u2026 something. Reality eventually expects answers. \u201cOne of the biggest changes for an athlete is going from being an athlete to not being an athlete and having a purpose while you\u2019re doing it,\u201d says Newbury Park head coach Joe Smigiel. \u201cBecause people can get lost and end up doing things that aren\u2019t productive.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Rising waits to be served a burger and fries on a disposable plate, Brady Smigiel walks toward the quad. He is the head coach\u2019s son, and once upon a time Cam Rising\u2019s ballboy at Newbury Park. He is also the reigning California Mr. Football, a 6-foot-5 four-star recruit who committed to the University of Michigan in April. He\u2019s wearing a plain white T-shirt and his hat on backward but nevertheless looks the part of a headliner. As Smigiel passes by a coach, he gets a how-are-things and reports all positives. Good week of practice, the Panthers quarterback says. Excited for the game.<\/p>\n
Rising didn\u2019t expect to be back here. At least not so soon. But here he surely is, part of this evolved partnership between Newbury Park signal-callers past and present. He works to add layers of polish to Smigiel\u2019s game and to supercharge Smigiel\u2019s football intelligence before an uncompromising life at a Big Ten blueblood. To tap into the compounding effect of a team\u2019s best player being its most positive leader.<\/p>\n
But the sport has a way of demanding more. Rising knows this better than most. He\u2019ll have to show Brady Smigiel the way when it happens to him, too.<\/p>\n
The team dinner winds down after about an hour, as the coaches and players scatter. There\u2019s not a lot of artificial light around here. Things get dark in a snap.<\/p>\n
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\n Utah quarterback Cam Rising leaves the 109th Rose Bowl game against Penn State in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 2, 2023. (Keith Birmingham \/ MediaNews Group \/ Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Before the college football universe knew who Cam Rising was, he\u2019d already transferred from the University of Texas, redshirted twice and suffered two season-ending injuries \u2014 the first as a Newbury Park junior, the second at Utah. Some deliverance followed: Rising accounted for 6,421 total yards and 58 total touchdowns across the 2021 and 2022 college football campaigns, leading the Utes to consecutive Rose Bowl appearances. In the second, he tore three knee ligaments and his meniscus. A grueling 19-month recovery followed. But there he was in the fall of 2024, leading the offense on to the field as the Rice-Eccles Stadium speaker system blared \u201cBad Moon Rising.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was in his mid-20s and on his feet; a mashup of California chill and Hemingway fisherman. Destroyed, but, dude, never defeated. \u201cThere\u2019s beauty in the struggle,\u201d was how Rising put it to his father<\/a>, Nicko, back then.<\/p>\n The complication with tragic heroes is the fall. Rising played three times in 2024. He injured his throwing hand<\/a> in the second game as he released a throw and then collided with a sideline hydration table. He came back four weeks later and injured his knee on the first drive. A couple days later, Utah ruled him out for the season. A few months later, Rising declared himself out, period, after consulting a pair of orthopedic surgeons who determined there was no way back from the hand issue. It compelled him to medically retire<\/a> from football.<\/p>\n Cam Rising was slow to get up after this collision with the water coolers on the sideline \ud83d\ude2c pic.twitter.com\/drn8EeAdoE<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) September 7, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cI mean, never an ideal situation when you get hurt, especially when you think you got a lot more football in you,\u201d Rising says now. \u201cBut sometimes it\u2019s how the cookie crumbles and you gotta just keep pushing, pretty much.\u201d<\/p>\n At these intersections, pity and fear collide. Everyone is sorry about a life\u2019s work dissolving through uncontrollable circumstances. Which is nice. But there\u2019s a lifetime to account for. That\u2019s daunting, and empathy alone doesn\u2019t draw the map.<\/p>\n Coaching is a natural refuge. Not the same, but only a few steps to the side of the derailment. \u201cThat\u2019s where people have the most (trouble) adjusting, is when they get out of it, and it just goes from 100 to nothing really quickly,\u201d Clint Trickett says. The Jacksonville State offensive coordinator threw for 5,897 yards across four seasons at Florida State and West Virginia before five concussions in 14 months precipitated the end of his playing career. Because his father, Rick, had been a football coach since 1976, the next thing was self-evident: Clint retired from playing in December 2014 and was the quarterbacks coach at East Mississippi Community College \u2014 the school of \u201cLast Chance U\u201d fame on Netflix \u2014 in 2015.<\/p>\n Grayson McCall mulled some sort of career in the sport whenever his playing days ended. His 10,000-plus passing yards at Coastal Carolina suggested that day was not imminent. But two significant head injuries \u2014 one at Coastal Carolina, the next after a transfer to N.C. State \u2014 altered the timeline. \u201cIt kind of threw me for a whirlwind there for two months,\u201d McCall says. \u201cMy life almost felt like it froze up.\u201d Left to his own devices, he concedes, he might have opted for isolation. An invitation from Wolfpack quarterbacks coach Kurt Roper to sit in on film sessions and game-planning meetings tugged McCall out of a potentially debilitating spiral.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople can say whatever they want to you, to motivate you to try to get you out of that slump that you\u2019re in,\u201d says McCall, now an offensive analyst at Coastal Carolina. \u201cBut for me, no words really did it. It was ultimately living with the truth and knowing that that was \u2018it\u2019 for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Cam Rising\u2019s view of the bottom was something else.<\/p>\n A couple Rose Bowls and legitimate Heisman Trophy chances thinned the air with expectation. The injuries, along with Utah\u2019s varying descriptions and handling of them, left even less room to breathe amid growing fan frustration<\/a>. (\u201cIs Cam Rising a FRAUD?\u201d one Big 12 podcast asked<\/a> in an episode title.) By the time Rising felt compelled to make a local radio appearance to explain the extent of his leg injury, it only underlined how tight everyone\u2019s collars had gotten. \u201cCam, I think, was starting to feel that because of how cold it got at Utah because of his injuries \u2014 and I don\u2019t mean \u2018cold\u2019 by weather,\u201d Joe Smigiel says. When Rising\u2019s hand hit that hydration table, though, all of it was moot. Nothing left but to make something out of bad luck, whatever the something was.<\/p>\n For Rising, his misfortune and some good timing dovetailed to put him here. Newbury Park lost its offensive coordinator to a head coaching job following a Division 2 state championship run in 2024. Smigiel had two names on his list for replacements: Another high school coach he\u2019d eyed for a while, and Cam Rising. The former withdrew from consideration because he couldn\u2019t make the family logistics work. \u201cI got to kind of sit there and think about what I want to do,\u201d Rising says. \u201cDefinitely wasn\u2019t interested in going to insurance or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n High school coaching was never the plan. It was a quick recruitment to Newbury Park, but a recruitment nonetheless. Joe Smigiel worked his relationship with Nicko Rising to ensure Cam knew the opportunity might present itself. Smigiel also enlisted Lorenzo Booker \u2013 Newbury Park alum and assistant coach, formerly of Florida State and three NFL teams \u2013 to reach out.<\/p>\n His message was simple. Idle hands are the devil\u2019s playground.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what really resonated with me,\u201d Rising says. \u201cIt kind of hit home. Might as well do something, be productive with the time.\u201d The presence of a Division I prospect was not determinative in this arrangement. The presence of this Division I prospect might have been. Smigiel grew up watching Cam Rising play. He wears No. 7 because that\u2019s what Rising wore here. He worked with Rising from a time before his voice dropped, absorbing pointers and getting free lessons whenever Rising came home on breaks from Utah. \u201cHe\u2019s somebody I want to see succeed,\u201d Rising says. But what was good for Brady Smigiel in 2025 was not altogether evident until he got the 2025 version of Cam Rising, officially deputized as a coach and therefore not strictly a friend.<\/p>\n Smigiel\u2019s right shoulder and elbow ached? Well, Rising told him, that\u2019s because his mechanics were a disaster. As Smigiel turned to create momentum, there wasn\u2019t any separation between his upper and lower body. So he wound up overcompensating. \u201cHe\u2019s huge on using your feet and developing your throw from the ground up \u2013 using the ground as your teammate, almost,\u201d Smigiel says. The offensive mastery Smigiel thought he had after throwing for 3,521 yards and 49 touchdowns as a junior? Rising trashed Newbury Park\u2019s playbook in favor of his own college-style attack heavy on presnap analysis from the quarterback. \u201cStuff I\u2019ve never seen before,\u201d Smigiel says. Mr. Football indeed fell so far out of his comfort zone that he\u2019d have his girlfriend quiz him on formations and reads when she came over to the house for dinner.<\/p>\n \u201cI watched a lot of film last year, and there were times I didn\u2019t feel like I was getting a lot out of it because I didn\u2019t really know how to watch it,\u201d Smigiel says. \u201cAnd to see how (Rising) literally watches every single person and if they give tendencies, everybody\u2019s eyes and how you can manipulate them \u2013 it\u2019s like watching art.\u201d<\/p>\n The other stuff, the Tilt-A-Whirl powered on injury and drama that Rising couldn\u2019t jump off for a few years there, they didn\u2019t get into much.<\/p>\n They also didn\u2019t really have to. Rising endured because he has rainbows for blood. He glides more than he walks. His pregame playlists purposefully lowered his blood pressure instead of spiking his adrenaline. His laugh is a staccato chuckle straight out of beachside bonfires, and he dispenses it generously. He is a believer, above all, in removing negativity from the process.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was always the most positive guy on the field,\u201d Brady Smigiel says. \u201cAnd I think it correlates to what he\u2019s been teaching me this year. It\u2019s so much more than just throwing a football.\u201d<\/p>\n Rising has explained to his second- and third-string quarterbacks how a defender following a receiver in motion \u2013 or not \u2013 signals man-to-man or zone coverage. He has explained to a misaligned Newbury Park receiver that he could find the hash mark by, you know, looking down. This is high school. He does not have dozens of advanced placement football students. It can be painstaking. But nerding out on the game with former Utah offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig turned on the bulb. Dissecting film and scheming up plays went from duty to obsession. Rising uses an old Andy Reid quote to explain it: Some people watch movies. Some people watch football.<\/p>\n \u201cI just enjoy ball,\u201d Rising says. \u201cIt\u2019s a fun sport. Especially when you get to execute some good plays and you dial it up for a certain look. And then you finally get the look, and you call it, and it goes the way you want to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
And the company he keeps. On any weekday evening in the late summer and fall, the Newbury Park Steelers might linger on the sidelines and wait for the high schoolers to finish practice. Then the town\u2019s youth football feeder program gets to work. Sometimes, an older kid might hang around to provide help and motivation and good vibes for the preadolescents. Which is how you draw the line between Brady Smigiel, former Newbury Park Steeler turned Newbury Park Panther turned future University of Michigan quarterback, and Cam Rising. \u201cI still do a drill that he taught me over there,\u201d Smigiel says, nodding toward practice fields adjacent to the stadium.<\/p>\n
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