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When former Western Kentucky coach Carlos Locklyn was hired to be in charge of the running backs with the Oregon Ducks, his first point of action was to get in touch with those who came before him. He wanted to talk to the people who made this a coveted position in his eyes; the people who set a standard decades ago, and created a legacy of dominant and successful rushers in Eugene.
The first person on the list was former RB coach Gary Campbell, who stands as the longest-tenured coach in Oregon history, coaching from 1983 to 2016.
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“For me, the standard when I first got here was to reach out to Coach Campbell,” Locklyn said on Tuesday. “And to reach out to every one of those backs, because that’s the standard. It’s my job to get that room back to that standard.”
When you think about the best rushers to come through Eugene, it’s nearly impossible to find someone who Campbell didn’t get his hands on. Saladin McCullough, Reuben Droughns, Jonathan Stewart, Jeremiah Johnson, LaMichael James, Kenjon Barner, Royce Freeman… the list goes on.
“I know there’s other running back coaches that came after Coach Campbell, but to me, from 1983 to 2016, that guy — he’s the standard,” Locklyn said. “And if there’s anybody I want to model myself after, it’s Coach Campbell. He would text me, I would text him, I would text some of the running backs that have been here to let them know that I respect what y’all have done here, and it’s on me to get that room back to the standard.”
It shouldn’t come as a shock that Locklyn took the effort to reach out and form a relationship with some of the stalwarts in Oregon’s history books. If we’ve learned anything about him in the months since his hiring, it’s that relationships are the most important factor between a coach and player. That was a driving factor for why Dan Lanning hired him in the first place.
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“Lock was a guy that always stood out to me as a coach. I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time and more than anything, I’ve noticed how players respond to him,” Lanning said on Tuesday. “You can see obviously that video, the connection that he has with his guys, and like we said from the beginning, we’re going to be about relationships and development. And Lock takes a lot of pride in having great relationships with his players.”
The video that Lanning referred to is one that we saw a couple of months ago when the new Oregon head coach rounded up a group of Locklyn’s former players — Darrell Henderson, Antonio Gibson, Tony Pollard, Kenneth Gainwell, Patrick Taylor — on a call to have them present as he was offered the new job at Oregon. It represented how much love there was from his former players.
“Anybody that knows me knows that those five guys from Memphis, they mean a lot to me,” Locklyn said. “So, that was special to have those guys on that call, and those guys wanted to be on that call. They know the journey I had to get into this profession.”
As he looks toward the future, Locklyn knows that he can learn a lot from the past. In Eugene, there is a great history of successful running backs that spans decades into the past. They’ve set the standard for what it means to be great players and great men, mentored by the legendary Gary Campbell.
“It’s on me to get that room back to the standard.”
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