I’ve been there twice.
Tuberville will tell you that everything he is today, everything he has accomplished, started in the little white house that Charles and Olive Tuberville bought in 1947. It was there, on the highway five miles outside of town, they raised their two sons and their daughter. Olive Tuberville still owns the house, though she lives in Auburn to be near her son and his family.
The Camden I saw on my two trips - one last year and one in 2001 - isn't a lot different than it was when Tuberville was growing up. The Grapette soft drink plant where his father worked and the paper mill have long since shut down, but the small-town values that nurtured a boy who loved to compete remain.
And the boy has become a big man in his world, a football coach known from coast to coast. His father would have been proud. A community leader who believed in working hard and competing hard, he died not long before Tommy coached his first game at Hermitage High School.
Charles Tuberville, known to almost everyone around Camden as "Tubby," loved all kinds of sports. He coached the local boys. He was a football and basketball official. And he especially loved the Arkansas Razorbacks.
Charles and Olive Tuberville's oldest son, Charles III, loved music. But Tommy inherited his father's love for competition and even the Arkansas Razorbacks. He still fondly remembers the trips he and his father made to Little Rock to watch them play.
Tommy Tuberville wasn't big or fast, but he wouldn't give up. He was a quarterback on little Harmony Grove High School's first football team. He was an outstanding student who was elected senior class president. He went 30 miles up the road to Magnolia and was a walk-on defensive back for the Southern Arkansas University Muleriders. Even then, he dreamed of being a coach. He didn’t play much, but he learned every position.
George Branch, who moved to Camden in 1965 to coach Fairview High School's football team and later served as school superintendent, became Charles Tuberville's closest friend. He watched Tommy grow up.
"I got to know C.R. - I know what his name is but promised I'd never reveal it - when he was a football and basketball official," Branch said last year. "He was kind of the head of the local officials, and that's how we became friends. I'm talking about lifelong friends. He just didn't live long enough.
"Tommy loved athletics. He wasn't very talented, but he loved it. I'm not going to say C.R. was partial, but he was really, really proud of him."
But nobody, not his father, not even Tuberville himself, could have imagined back in Camden what was to come. Back then, it didn't really matter. He was just a boy growing up and having fun.
Bobby Garcia laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes as he told the story from long ago. As best Garcia could remember, Tuberville was about 12 years old. They were playing in a baseball game at the Camden Boys Club. Tuberville’s father, Charles, was their coach.
"They were broadcasting the game on the local radio station for some reason," Garcia said. "Tommy was playing shortstop when his dad had to stop the game. Tommy had a transistor radio in his back pocket so he could listen to the game while he was playing."
It's a delicious memory from a time when summers were for fishing and swimming, for picking green apples and playing ball. It was 36 years ago that Tuberville left rural Arkansas on a bold adventure. Today, he makes almost $3 million a year as the head football coach at Auburn University.
Maybe it’s those small-town roots that make Tuberville not always take himself so seriously. He is a fierce competitor. He has an ego like all coaches at his level do, but you don’t have to talk to him for long to see the boy from rural Arkansas is still there.
"I think it's helped me that I kind of remember where I came from," Tuberville said. "Growing up, everything revolved around the community. My dad was on the school board. One of my best friends' parents owned the Hornet Diner across the street from the school.
"When I go into these small schools, I know how important it is. I sign autographs and take pictures. You don't forget where you came from. It helps me remember that my job is important, but it's not nearly as important as I think it is sometimes."
After the 2004 season, when Tuberville was at the peak of his professional life, he remembered again where it all started. He was national Coach of the Year after leading Auburn to a 13-0 record and spoke to the American Football Coaches Association convention.
"I told them that if you look at the successful coaches across the country, there aren't many Heisman Trophy winners or All-Americans," Tuberville said. "They come from small schools and small towns because of the work ethic. They are people that wanted to make something of themselves instead of having it given to them."
It certainly wasn’t given to Tuberville. He began at the bottom of the coaching ladder, helping start the football program at Hermitage High School. Brownie Parmley was a rookie head coach and Tuberville was his assistant.
"Tommy coached the defense and I coached the offense," Parmley said. "There was one more coach, a teacher who had never played football. Tommy and I were the only ones who knew football, or thought we did.
"We decided we were going to have a scrimmage one Saturday morning. The quarterback got down under the center and said `Down! Set!' When he did, all the players in the secondary got in 3-point stances. That's a true story."
Parmley left and Andy Anders took over and kept Tuberville on his staff. Eventually, Tuberville became the head coach. He towed his trailer to Arkansas State to work for Larry Lacewell for almost no pay. He got out of the business for a year, opening a catfish restaurant with his sister, Vickie Fewell, in Tullahoma, Tenn.
Tuberville was running his catfish restaurant when the opportunity came to go to work for Jimmy Johnson at Miami as a volunteer assistant. He jumped at the chance, living in a dormitory and cleaning cruise ships in his spare time to make ends meet. He was part of three national championships, became defensive coordinator under Dennis Erickson, moved to Texas A&M for a season and finally became a head coach in 1995 at Ole Miss.
In late November of 1998, he was named Auburn's head coach. In a little more than two weeks, he’ll take his 10th Auburn team to the practice field.
And he’ll remember again where it all started.
