Tommy Tuberville

When quarterback Jason Campbell and running back Ronnie Brown were starring at Auburn two decades ago, they did not foresee their coach would become a U.S. senator from Alabama. But with Tommy Tuberville presently in that position and seeking the Republican nomination for governor, the two former Tigers said they weren’t surprised by the turn of events.

While attending the Senior Bowl Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Point Clear on Sunday, Campbell and Brown offered similar observations to explain their former coach’s successful move from football to politics.

“I had no idea, no idea,” Campbell said of Tuberville’s career change. “And people have asked me that, and I said, ‘Well, I take it back.’ I said there was times he would be on the sideline, be 40, 50 people watching us practice and every coach is on the field, except him. He was always on the sidelines, shaking hands and talking with different people, so I guess he was kind of promoting his next career while we was out there practicing and getting ready for games.”

Campbell played at Auburn from 2001 through 2004 while Brown spent five seasons with Tuberville, arriving in 2000.

“You know, I knew Tub,” Brown said. “It didn’t surprise me. When you looked back at it, he was always entertaining at practice. We were always having people there, so he’s always rubbing elbows and networking. And so that part doesn’t surprise me because he’s always been a great networker. But then when you look at it and say, OK, politics. I was, like, I don’t know how much he knew about it, or how much he knows about it even to this point.

“But you know, it’s just funny to see, as we get older, the people that we knew in certain capacities to change and grow and be in different spaces.”

Tuberville’s best Auburn team posted a 13-0 record in the 2004 season, when Campbell won the SEC Offensive Player of the Year Award.

But Brown was the first player picked off the team in the 2005 NFL Draft, going to the Miami Dolphins at No. 2. The Washington Redskins picked Campbell at No. 25. Between Brown and Campbell, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers chose running back Carnell “Cadillac” Williams at No. 5 and Washington selected cornerback Carlos Rogers at No. 9 as Auburn became the first SEC team to produce four first-round picks in a single NFL Draft.

Campbell’s first NFL contract paid him $7.5 million across five seasons. Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson said he was offered as much as $6.5 million for the 2026 season if he would transfer. Instead, Simpson entered the NFL Draft.

That’s the kind of situation that prompted Tuberville to call college football “a complete disaster” while speaking to reporters at the Regions Celebrity Pro-Am at Greystone Golf and Country Club in Birmingham last week. While Tuberville said he’s not opposed to athletes being paid, he thinks escalating payments and increasing transfers indicate a legislative remedy is necessary.

“We’ve got to do something because it’s getting out of control,” Tuberville said. “We’ll have teams this year that will get close to $60 million spending on NIL. And I don’t mind kids making money, but, you know, it’s getting out of hand. You’re buying teams now.

“Kids are transferring every year. And what are we supposed to be doing? We’re supposed to be educating. And there’s no degrees being gotten when you can transfer every year. It is a complete disaster.”

RELATED: TUBERVILLE: UNLIMITED TRANSFERRING, $60 MILLION ROSTERS HAVE MADE COLLEGE FOOTBALL ‘A COMPLETE DISASTER’

Brown said he didn’t think the changes since his days on the Plains were ruining college athletes, but he did agree with Tuberville that better guidelines are needed.

“When you look at that, that’s a perspective,” Brown said. “But you also say, ‘Well, yeah, the NIL kind of takes away from coaches becoming the ones that are making $14 or $15 million a year.’ And it’s one thing to be on campus and I’m eating noodles every day during the week, and I’m riding by and coaches have their lake houses and these things. They got my jersey in the bookstore and coach can’t invite me over for dinner.

“And so there’s so many guys that come from socioeconomically challenged backgrounds that this is the opportunity that many of them have. And then also thinking about it, again in a holistic standpoint, when we’re playing football, spending 80 hours a week, you know, we weren’t networking. We weren’t interning, and so no one really told us how to network and so we weren’t building those skill sets yet. I feel like we have so many intangibles as athletes that we weren’t honing those skills on how to make them transferable.

“And so it’s not that I think it’s ruining; I think there needs to be some structure. But I think a lot of it is because it wasn’t planned, and it’s not strategized, it wasn’t structured. Now we need people to come from both sides of the table, meaning players, coaches and all those involved to make decisions and say, ‘OK, what are the challenges? What are the goals? What are the objectives? How do we get there? And what makes sense for everyone? Is it giving these young men as much as we can?’”

Campbell said he agreed with Tuberville’s position against multiple transfers for convenience. Tuberville is in favor of allowing an athlete to transfer once without penalty. Past that, other transfers should be accompanied by a one-year wait to play, the senator said.

“I think players deserve to get paid,” Campbell said. “I think no one thought it was going to reach this extension of where we’re at now. It’s almost semi-pro or, in some cases, professional with some of the salaries that some guys are making.

“I think there needs to be some form or type of rules on the transfer portal. I think that kind of helps the overall because if you’re a kid coming out of high school, you make good money, your staff wants to have an opportunity to develop you without the pressure of the first year of ‘I got to play this kid even if he’s not ready, otherwise he’s going to transfer.’ Now you’re hurting the kid and you’re hurting the team in that way. But if a kid comes in, and he’s not ready, that gives you a little bit more time to be patient with him, bring him along, and then by time the second year rolls around now, he may be ready to get out there and perform. But you didn’t have to pressure him into playing his first year, which can hurt his confidence if he doesn’t perform. So I do think something needs to be done with the transfer rules, how they need to regulate those and everything.

“NIL, once you open Pandora’s box, it’s hard to control the salaries because some teams, they want to be the best and they don’t have patience, so they can try to buy a victory, buy a championship, and that doesn’t work. You can spend all the money in the world, and it still doesn’t guarantee you a championship. It still has to be togetherness amongst the players, and it still has to be a great fit. It’s not about who makes the most money. It’s do you fit what we’re trying to do within our program, within our locker room. I think that’s the overall goal, why you saw Indiana win a championship this year. They bought into what their coach, (Curt) Cignetti, was trying to teach them, and he got the right players to fit what he wants to do, and that’s the key. And they wasn’t the highest-paid team in college football.”

RELATED: JASON CAMPBELL ON SENIOR BOWL HALL OF FAME, AUBURN’S 2005 DRAFT CLASS

Campbell entered the Senior Bowl Hall of Fame at the Class of 2026 induction ceremony at the Grand Hotel Golf Resort and Spa on Sunday night. Brown came to watch Campbell be honored.

“That was my college roommate,” Brown said. “Still a close friend. Godparents to my kids. I’m a godfather for his daughter.

“But I think just accomplishments, when we set out to start playing this game, it wasn’t about the recognition and all of that stuff. It was just about loving the game. Doing it the right way when you’re talking about Jason Campbell. He’s somebody who certainly has done it the right way. Represents not only the school, the university, but his family and what he stands for, so it’s always good to be able to support him in anything as he does.

“And so I wanted to congratulate him, to be here for him in this moment because he put a lot of work in. A lot of times people don’t see what happens behind the scenes. You only see the successes or the failures live. And so for him to be able to be here, it says, a lot about what he’s done, the integrity that he approached the game with and what he was able to do.”