Atop Alumni Stadium, home to the Division II Kentucky State Thorobreds, Campbell coached the secondary for the Dragons of Lane College, a historically black private college in Tennessee of fewer than 1,000 students located about halfway between Memphis and Nashville.

On an evening perfectly painted for a night of college football — 70 degrees and clear with a mild wind — the Dragons beat the Thorobreds 32-16. The game was Campbell’s first foray back into coaching after three seasons off the gridiron, a return to scratch the itch that never left.

As if he never left the profession, Campbell delivered the classic football lines to describe the game: “A tough fight. Guys believed in themselves and believed in us as coaches.

“It was a special moment to get that win.”

Campbell could walk out of Alumni Stadium with his head up Saturday.

Nothing’s fair in war

Nobody ever said football is fair. If football was supposed to be fair, the pigskin wouldn’t be oblong, referees would never miss a holding call and Amp Campbell might be winding down a career in the NFL.

Campbell came to MSU to play football in the late 1990s from Sarasota, Fla., a beachfront town located on the Gulf of Mexico that makes East Lansing look like Siberia.

When Campbell arrived, he went about his job with a workmanlike attitude.

“Amp was not a very vocal player. He was very quiet, very reserved,” said MSU head strength and conditioning coach Ken Mannie, who has been with the program for 14 years. “He always came and did his job and loved the game. Even though he wasn’t real talkative, he had a fire in his belly for the game of football.”

With significant size for a defensive back (about 6 feet tall and 200 pounds) and strong closing speed, Campbell quickly made a name for himself. As a sophomore, he tallied 54 tackles with three forced fumbles.

He made another jump as a junior, posting 40 tackles, 15 pass break-ups and a team-leading five interceptions. Second-team All-Big Ten accolades were in order for the junior, who had started to garner attention from NFL scouts because of his nose for the ball.

Entering his senior season, Campbell was primed to pave himself a path to the pros, where millions of dollars and a continuation of his passion would await.

He just needed to keep his head up.

In the open field

The Spartans dropped their opening game of the 1998 season at home, 23-16, to Colorado State before trekking west for an away game against Oregon.

Late in the first quarter, Campbell found himself in the open field needing to make a tackle against Ducks fullback Chris Young.

Campbell broke the golden rule. He put his head down into Young’s thigh to make the tackle, made contact and immediately collapsed.

He had fractured two vertebrae and needed immediate spinal fusion surgery.

“I think that the part I’ll remember the most is laying on the hospital bed with them drilling screws in my head, fitting me for a halo and then telling me that I was done playing football for the rest of the year,” Campbell said.

Done for the year. Not his career.

Back near MSU’s campus, Campbell’s girlfriend of four years, Denise, walked into a friend’s house, located a TV and saw a player lying on the turf. Her future husband appeared not to be seriously injured, but a phone call hours later informed her of the pending surgery.

“It was definitely scary,” Denise Campbell said. “I was more so worried about him and they were kind of preparing him for that worst — that he might not be able to walk normal again.”

The injury was particularly crippling for MSU head coach Nick Saban, who developed a bond with Campbell that very few players have with the current Alabama head coach. In 1999, Saban said he had “never felt lower as a coach than when (Campbell) got hurt.”

After undergoing surgery to insert a metal plate into his back, Campbell was left in a restricting halo and in a fight for his football career.

Back on the field

Campbell’s next 12 months were all about returns.

Returning from a devastating injury by religiously rehabbing for several months.

Returning to the classroom to earn a degree and a sixth year of eligibility.

Returning to the field after being medically cleared for the season opener against none other than the Oregon Ducks.

One year after seeing his football future break along with his back, Campbell buckled his chin strap against Oregon and took his place in the secondary on a Thursday night in front of a national audience.

MSU fell behind 17-7 but battled back to tie the game heading into the fourth quarter. With MSU’s defense on its heels near the red zone at the start of the final quarter, linebacker Julian Peterson stripped the Oregon ball carrier. Serendipity doesn’t describe Campbell’s position on the field. Both coaches called the right play to put Campbell near the fumble. He scooped it up and outran each Duck for 85 yards into the end zone for six.

It was the return that capped his yearlong return.

“I started running and said, ‘I gotta score. I can’t let nobody catch me,’” Campbell said. “That was something that I couldn’t even dream of and it happened at the right time.”

Campbell’s touchdown proved to be the go-ahead points in a 27-20 comeback victory.

The sixth-year senior baptized by an incomprehensible fire led the 1999 Spartans to a 10-2 season, MSU’s best record in more than 30 years. It was capped by a 37-34 Citrus Bowl victory in his home state against the hometown Florida Gators.

Campbell took a shot at the NFL with the New Orleans Saints but was cut before taking a snap in the pros.

Nobody wanted to take a chance on a defensive back with screws and a metal plate in his neck.

“Once I got released from New Orleans, my agent was like, ‘Amp, I can get you back somewhere,’” Campbell said. “I said, ‘No, I’m fine. I’ve fulfilled a dream and had an opportunity to fly out for the game and work out.’”

Campbell ended his football-playing career in 2000 with his head held high.

Scratching the itch

Campbell was hired one month ago at Lane College, his first job back in football after leaving Ferris State in 2004 and Urbana University in Ohio in 2003. Earlier this year, Saban offered Campbell an internship with his Crimson Tide after Campbell sought advice from him in April.

In between coaching jobs, he returned to Sarasota with his wife, working as a transporter for Gordon Food Service and with autistic children for the Sarasota Country School District.

Football never left his sights during that time — he was an assistant coach at the high school where he started.

Now, days at the office can be an up-at-dawn and down-by-dusk endeavor in Jackson, Tenn., home of Lane College.

“He’s a great mentor for young people,” said MSU head coach Mark Dantonio, who was Campbell’s secondary coach during his collegiate career. “He was a great player and, you know, it’s hard. The coaching profession is tough to kind of break and navigate your way through. He’s experiencing a little bit of that, but I love him.”

Campbell stays in touch with a few players and coaches from his Spartan days — he text-messaged Dantonio to wish the Spartans good luck for their opening game against Cal last week — and dreams of one day returning to Spartan Stadium as a defensive coordinator.

For now, he’ll take in the daily grind of coaching and family life with Denise and his two children, Anthony, 2, and Kiera, 12.

Anthony is poised to follow in his father’s footsteps as an athlete (whenever he sees the sports aisle in a department store, “He’s screaming, ‘Ball, ball, ball!’ Campbell said) and Kiera is a straight-A student whose father is trying to fend off eighth-grade boys calling the family’s home phone.

“Getting up every morning and seeing them smile, hearing them say, ‘Daddy,’ and seeing them happy, that brings me happiness because I know that I’ve provided for them,” Campbell said. “I’m doing the right thing, they’re doing the right thing and I’m making them feel proud by being positive and trying to make their lives a lot easier than what mine was.”

Campbell said he thinks back “all the time” to what might have become of his NFL career had he not collided with Young 10 years ago. Yet, each day, he can walk onto the football field with his head held high as he pursues the profession he once said that he would break his neck for.

“You go back and think about what if I had kept my head up or what if I was on the other side of the field. If I wouldn’t have just ducked my head at his thigh level, maybe I wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in today,” Campbell said.

“I just figured God had a plan for me, maybe not to play in the NFL. He had a plan for me to do what I’m doing today and I’m blessed to be doing what I’m doing today. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”