Morgan Campbell, "My Fighting Family: Borders and Bloodlines and the Battles That Made Us" — SportsLit S8E03
The CBC Sports senior contributor and boxing commentator packs a punch in a memoir about coming "from people who bend about as easily as your grandpa’s fused ankle."
The début book from Morgan Campbell reminds us that what you truly get from your dad and mum is what happened to them that tipped their life choices.
And how many layers on the layers, and multitudes are contained in a five-word question — where are you really from? The pressure of identity upkeep is real, and Campbell, as a son of African-American parents who arrived in Canada from Chicago fifty-five years ago, edifies us all about the breadth of Canadian experiences in My Fighting Family: Borders and Bloodlines and the Battles That Made Us (McClelland and Stewart, Jan. 23). Our institutions, including media, are clumsy and awkward about living up to stated ideals.
“If I look at the Canadian journalism industry… I don’t see any evidence that 2020 was not January at the gym,” Campbell, in response to a question from Neil Acharya about the police murder of George Floyd during the COVID-19 pandemic, in a new episode of SportsLit dedicated to his book.
“But none of that had anything to do with whether I could sell this book,” adds Campbell, who says he pitched a combo between the memoirs Boy Wonders by Cathal Kelly and What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young.
Campbell is a CBC Sports senior contributor who was invariably a great read in his 18-year tenure with the Toronto Star and also with The New York Times. My Fighting Family, there is more than enough Sportz!! to keep it in our hot zone. It is about a thousand and one themes that can course through African-American families, including those whose self-discovery, like his, involves the Great Migration, the city of Chicago, and a move to Canada.
“My childhood was not perfect — there was a lot of conflict there,” Campbell says in this episode. “But my parents raised me with a very firm understanding of who were as African-Americans, even though we lived in Canada. Growing up in Canada gives you the space and leeway to hold those identities … my parents nurtured this identity, and it helped me create an identity that works on both sides of the border.”
At first sight, the title jumped me to the false conclusion Campbell was writing about boxing. He was the boxing correspondent for journalism’s “Old Gray Lady” before the NYT, no doubt following a painful headcount rationalization, let go of unionized sports journalists in mid-2023. But no, this is about the two sides of Campbell’s Chicagoan family — the Campbells from the South Side and the musical Joneses, the lone Black family in a Westside neighbourhood.1 And, to channel the Greatest, how they often had to get it on, since they often didn’t get along. But they did not hear any bell after three minutes.
Our guest’s family background put me in mind of the memoir by Swedish rapper Jason (Timbuktu) Diakité entitled A Drop of Midnight. Diakité also came up in a northern nation that a parent had chosen instead of being in the United States. There was an omnipresent wariness and weariness one could read into it.
Neil and I are in the same ’tweener group who got some ’80s culture and some ’90s culture. Both authors were teens when hip-hop and R&B blew up in the late ’80s and ’90s. It was a heavy load, but I think we avoided a derailment.
This episode completes a brace — the first guest whose spouse has also appeared. Campbell is married to Perdita Felicien, who came on in 2021 after writing My Mother's Daughter: A Memoir of Struggle and Triumph. Down below, there are some listener notes to complement the new episode with Morgan Campbell.
Intro
2:30 “Knowing it’s loaded, but not being offended.” We might need some Coles Notes about the Canadian state and gaps between policy and people. Hoser humblebrag incoming: Canada stands as the first nation in the world to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy.
It is great. As the vocalist Molly Johnson, who has two degrees of Kevin Bacon connection from Campbell, recently put it on the Remembering podcast: “We all eat one another’s food.”
There is evidence it trended that way before my life began. My Swedish-Scottish-Canadian mum rented a room from an Italian family as a university student in Ottawa for a year, and her lasagna is second to no nonnas.
6:30 Here I mention the legendary Dr. Geoffrey S. Smith (1941-2021), who was a history and phys-ed professor at Queen’s University at Kingston.
The legendary lecturer became known to me in 1988. I was in Grade 6 — sixth grade for Campbell and Americans — when my mum enrolled at Queen’s as a part-time mature student, working toward a teaching career. Not sure if it was deliberate, but the first class Kathie Sager had was Geoff’s immensely popular “Conspiracy and Dissent in 20th-Century America.”
The lectures were on Monday nights. My hockey practices were before school on Tuesday mornings. That meant 15-minute drives to the rink were filled with my mum raconteuring what Professor Smith had done the night before — such as bringing a jar of yellowish fluid and asking if anyone wanted to drug-test it right Canada had been gobsmacked by Ben Johnson getting busted for cheating at the Seoul Olympics. Johnson, of course, comes up in our 2023 episode with the Canadian sprinting great Donovan Bailey.
I became friendly with Geoff as a student sportswriter in the late ’90s often assigned to cover Queen’s home basketball doubleheaders. He had put one and one together that the Sager byline in The Queen’s Journal might have a tie to his student from a decade earlier.
Oddly enough, Campbell’s parents arrived in Canada in 1969, and Campbell threw out Cal-Berkeley as one of his envisioned college football teams. Geoff Smith also arrived in Canada in 1969, and he completed his master’s degree at Cal-Berkeley
7:30 The 1995 Northwestern Wildcats were somewhat of a miracle team. They reached the Rose Bowl after 23 consecutive losing seasons, including a 34-loss streak around the start of the 1980s.
9:00 OK, those Kevin Bacon connections that are intertwined with the music world. Campbell’s maternal grandfather Claude Jones (1923-2018) was a jazz pianist who played with some all-time greats. Campbell’s uncle Jeff Jones is a bassist who plays in CanRock great Tom Cochrane’s band Red Rider and has been touring with Burton Cummings.
The younger Jones was also the bassist alongside vocalist Molly Johnson in Infidels, a ’90s funk-rock band. I am surprised there is no Professor of Rock video about the band. They won a JUNO Award for Best New Group in 1992, but their second album ended up in record-industry limbo.
And yes, as Acharya notes, the late great jazz singer Sarah Vaughan was the mother-in-law of 1980s-90s NHL wing Russ Courtnall. Leafs Nations denizens of a certain vintage, including conscientious objectors (ahem), still rue “Courtnall for Kordic.”
11:00 This is an episode where we have to date ourselves. Campbell graduated from high school in Mississauga in 1995. I graduated from a Kingston-area high school in ’96, a year before Neil escaped from another one. But that was when the Ontario Academic Credit year, aka Grade 13, also existed. According to the math, that takes five years off one’s current age.
Interview!
15:00 Off the hop, Campbell shares an early-teens encounter at a family-and-friends reunion in Grand Rapids, Mich., with 15-times world champion boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. Since I relate everything to sitcoms, the description cued up the Duvet Family Reunion scene in an episode of Detroiters. The light is still on for Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson to reboot it with a cross-over with Happy Endings.
17:30 “I don’t see any evidence that 2020 was not January at the gym.” Campbell refers to a column he penned that was published in the Toronto Star on July 11, 2020.
25:00 Nineteen sixty-eight was one of the worst years in American history. Does that need to be mentioned? Everything comes around, and we have seen how revolting against The Future rears up whenever the old guard and its sentinels are pressed to rationalize their privilege.
30:00 The opening scene in My Fighting Family, which spurred the question Neil asks, takes place with a 20-ish Campbell taking a local bus from Windsor, Ont., to report for a work placement at the Detroit News.
38:00 Gordon Korman, a Canadian-born children’s/YA author, is canonical for Canadians who retain a bit of their ’80s schoolkids culture. Campbell mentions Go Jump In The Pool! which was part of the Macdonald Hall series. There is at least one podcast out there dedicated to revisiting his whole oeuvre.
39:30 The Sports Illustrated author Ralph Wiley (1952-2004) was hugely influential on a generation of impressionable teens. Wiley’s Sugar Ray Robinson profile “Bittersweet Twilight for Sugar” ran in S.I. on July 13, 1987.
I was touched by a cover story Wiley wrote on Notre Dame football star (and CFL legend) Raghib Ismail. Entitled, “The Light and the Lightning,” it appeared in the Sept. 25, 1989 issue, in the wake of Ismail housing two kickoff return touchdowns against Michigan in the Big House. Wiley revealed something huge about the family of Ismail, and what is remarkable is how logical it seemed to a 12-year-old reader who was white, irreligious, and had no concept of Islam. Of course, someone wearied by anti-Black racism might conceal their identity.
Completing a Wiley hat trick, Campbell brings up an Ismail cover feature that was published in February 1991.
45:00 “Hedgefundbros” and “private-equity goons” brings up a brush with content mills. Last fall, one based in California offered me a contract that called for churning out 6,000 words in an eight-hour shift for far less than a living wage … and accepting pay penalties if the output fell too low. Seriously.
52:30 Here is Campbell’s page at CBC Sports.
57:00 Segueing around to athletics and the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics. This conversation was recorded on Feb. 6. Here is a little more detail about Noah Lyles’ closing 10-metre split during a 60-metre race just a few days earlier.
1:01:00. We were total trick-ass marks for an Arn Anderson reference.
1:06:00. Time for a reading!
Campbell reads a passage from one of his last Mississauga-area high school football games in 1994, playing for the Woodfield Rams against the Erindale Raiders.
1:12:30. More references to Raghib Ismail that might require a friendly contextual reminder. Ismail was a junior star at Notre Dame with Heisman Trophy hype during the wild 1990 college football season.
No team that ascended to No. 1 in either major poll was able to keep it. Notre Dame was No. 1 twice and lost the top spot due to defeats at home. They were set up to be a spoiler in an Orange Bowl rematch against the No. 1-ranked Colorado Buffaloes. The season prior, one-loss Notre Dame scotched Colorado’s ambition of a 12-0 record and national title.
The game was a snorer, but Ismail, indeed, returned a punt to the end zone that appeared to vault Notre Dame into the late lead. Colorado ran the option run-oriented power-I, so it was good as over… before a penalty was announced that negated the play.2 And yeah, that spring, Ismail chose the Toronto Argonauts and the contract proffered by Bruce McNall, John Candy, and Wayne Gretzky over the NFL. Wilder, still.
1:15:00. My Fighting Family includes an essay about the Campbells being caught up in the run of the 1985 Bears, one of only three NFL teams to win 18 games in a single season.3
Reminder: Erik Kramer, who remains the holder of some Chicago team passing records, was our season-première guest.
1:18:00. Ironically, Campbell making note of Randall Cunningham and Daunte Culpepper as solid Minnesota Vikings shows I am shaky as an interviewer. Some preliminary bar for a generational quarterback was needed since everyone’s working definition will vary, invariably.
Randall Cunningham was my first favorite NFL player, and it had a lot to do with an S.I. cover photo of him from 1989. The autographed photo I have him on my living room is from his Philadelphia Eagles run, not when his late-1990s airing-it-out-to-Randy Moss renaissance that put me in the Vikings camp fully completely.
Anywho, the Sager standard for generational quarterback is not that high:
Unproven as an NFL starter before his intake (draft, trade, etc.)
Minimum seven-season run where fans know they have an A-lister behind centre at the start of training camp
Some solid playoff seasons with serious Super Bowl talk.
Cunningham was capital-T Truth in 1998 when he collaborated with three hall of fame players — Moss, fellow receiver Cris Carter, and left guard Randall McDaniel — on a record-setting offence. After beginning the season as the backup, his passing proficiency was the second-best of any player in the 20th century behind only, you guessed it, 1984 Dan Marino.
Generational quarterback? That came in Philly in another time and another NFL epoch.
Culpepper showed out so well as the Vikings’ starter that I felt confident enough to purchase a No. 11 jersey in 2002. In the road white, where food stains are harder to hide! But NFL media denialism that often rises in response to a successful quarterback who is Black, or one coming out of the NCAA, was always there. His success is a function of Randy Moss, they said. The Vikings were a .500 team when the pair were both fully active and starting. Post-Moss, and some other stuff, it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Culpepper bounced around with no chance to start on a functional team. His team’s record in his no-Moss starts was 7-25 (.219).
A-ha! So it was all Moss!
Since the “modern NFL” was created in 1978, 20 different quarterbacks have led the Vikings in passing yards across a complete season. The longest skein of seasons as the top passer is six years under, all guh-gether now, Kirk Cousins.
The Bears have had 21 different top passers in that stretch, with the longest span being seven seasons of The Jay Cutler Experience.
Please, though, do not lump the franchises in together, even if they split their games this year and both tied for last in the NFC North. The Vikings are never going to be taunted and booed until my throat is sore, or until the Kansas City Mahomeys stop winning, about the 2017 draft.
Remember when Chicago traded up to select Mitch Trubisky No. 2 overall in 2017 when Patrick Mahomes was also there? Mahomes and Kansas City have won three Super Bowl titles, and Trubisky has washed out with three teams.
1:18:30 Some complementary reading of how the Bears fumbled Arlington Heights stadium shakedown. Ryan Poles is the general manager of Chicago, which holds the No. 1 overall choice in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Details
Thank you so much, Morgan Campbell!
Please check out sportslit.ca for our catalog and links to read Campbell and Felicien. And yes, Neil Acharya and fellow Kingstonian Rob Freeman have made a documentary entitled Drop The Needle.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
All of my Chicago geography knowledge comes from bingeing Shameless in 2020. How the hell did Frank Gallagher end up in Toronto that time?
For anyone who needs closure on that anecdote, Colorado won 10-9. The Buffs (11-1-1) and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (11-0-1) split the national championship. It was the first of three seasons in the 1990s that had dueling national champions swag. It happened in 1991 when Miami and Washington each went 12-0, and again in 1997 with Michigan (12-0) and Nebraska (13-0).
And it took until 2014 to a bring in a legitimate-esque playoff structure. Well, as long as Michigan won the last four-team College Football Playoff, just like the Toronto Blue Jays won the last two World Series titles before Major League Baseball added wild-card playoff berths.
The others are San Francisco in 1984 and New England in 2007. It is still an 18-1 season even if the Super Bowl was the ‘1.’