Cam Rising had to find purpose after retiring from Utah football. This is what his new life looks like.

Newbury Park, Calif. • Cam Rising looks the same but different.

His long hair still sticks out from underneath his hat, though it is a few inches shorter than the last time he was standing on the sidelines of a football field.

His hat, by the way, is no longer Utah red, but rather black and yellow and new enough to not yet be stained by sweat. And he still flaunts his signature, bushy goatee and mustache — only now the hair on his upper lip sits atop a smile.

Yes, Rising is smiling again.

On a late August afternoon, Kanye West’s “Amazing” is playing on the speakers at a Newbury Park High School football practice, and Rising sways and grins.

It is the cheesy smile Utah football fans saw as Rising toyed with defenses, and won conference championships, and took his teams to back-to-back Rose Bowls. It’s a look far different from the one he wore as he grimaced through injuries last season, as he watched from the sidelines as losses piled up, and then as one of the school’s finest quarterbacks made a quiet escape from Salt Lake City.

Rising’s right hand, the one that accounted for 53 touchdown passes over three seasons at the University of Utah, is the same but different, too.

Gone is the red tape that covered it and protected it, keeping its tendons taut. But while the hand may look healed, the former quarterback rarely grips a football anymore, unable to throw the pigskin to streaking wide receivers with the velocity he once had. Instead, he holds play sheets and points frantically to direct a wide receiver and daps up the teenagers who now call him “Coach.”

“Life doesn’t stop for anybody, so you just have to keep on pushing,” Rising says during a break in practice. That’s why I’m out here coaching right now.”

‘You’ve got to move on’

During the Newbury Park Panthers’ walkthrough ahead of the team’s big game against Arroyo Grande High last month, Rising watched through sunglasses and with folded arms as his offense moved through the playbook.

He then stepped onto the field and cosplayed as a guard, blocking an imaginary defensive lineman, while Newbury Park quarterback Brady Smigiel practiced handoffs with the Panthers’ running backs.

“Look at Coach Rising!” one player shouted. “He’s getting back to his glory days!”

Rising’s glory days might feel like a lifetime ago to some Utah fans, too. The Utes won 20 games with Rising as their starter, the fifth most in school history. He ranks fourth in total touchdown passes and sixth in passing yards. He earned big NIL paydays and had NFL aspirations.

But for months after Rising was shoved into a Gatorade cooler on the sideline of Rice-Eccles Field last September, there was mostly frustration and questions with few real answers.

When would he return to the Utes’ lineup? Later … Would he declare for the 2025 NFL Draft? Would he enter the transfer portal? Would he somehow return to the Utes?

The speculation lingered, awkwardly at times.

Rising, meanwhile, was quietly dealing with a devastating diagnosis. “I’ve been advised by two orthopedic physicians that I will never be able to return to playing football,” he finally revealed in May.

A damaged tendon had taken his decision out of his hands.

“There was really nothing to navigate,” his father, Nicko Rising, said. “If you can’t spin the ball, can’t grip the ball, you can’t play quarterback. It’s over. So you’ve got to move on to the next chapter. It’s forced upon you.”

Rising quickly found the next chapter at Newbury Park High School, his alma mater, as the Panthers’ offensive coordinator.

“I was never thinking that I was going to be able to get (Rising),” Panthers coach Joe Smigiel said. “Who gets a guy like this at the high school level?”

But Rising had thought about coaching for some time. He talked about the idea fondly in deep conversations with former teammates, but he never thought his coaching opportunity would come this fast.

“I always, to some degree, knew I wanted to be involved in football,” Rising said. “You respect so much that you want to always be a part of it and give back to it as much as you can.”

Newbury Park assistant coach Lorenzo Booker encouraged Rising to join the coaching staff, saying it would bring back the camaraderie he lost after leaving Utah — and keep him from “sitting around” in his Ventura, Calif., beach house and picking up bad habits.

Rising, too, his own questions about the gig. How did Brady prepare? What was it like coaching high schoolers? And would it really fill the void of no longer playing college football?

“When you’ve done something since you were 8, it becomes like breathing,” Booker said. “Your body just knows it’s football season.”

And then all of a sudden, “it’s gone,” he said.

Rising realized he needed something to keep that from happening.

“He’s got to have a purpose, and I think that’s important for him,” Nicko said.

There are still what-ifs and dreams about what might have been.

“No one will ever know if he would’ve started in the NFL, but I know for damn sure he was going to make a team,” Nicko said. “To see his former peers on the field doing it and he couldn’t because of an injury, that’s hard. I think he hides it well.”

Mentoring a rising star

Brady Smigiel said he enticed Rising into taking this job.

When Rising was starring for the Panthers, Brady was the Newbury Park’s ball boy. Now Brady is a four-star recruit who has committed to play quarterback at the University of Michigan.

As Rising considered whether to become the Panthers’ coordinator, Brady sent him old videos and photos of the two’s training sessions at Panther Stadium years ago.

Brady said his father started screaming in the house when Rising finally accepted the position.

“He’s a really good coach,” Brady said. “I don’t know what he wants to do. He’s in the ‘figuring out his life’ phase, but I’m happy to be with him because he’s helping me out so much.”

Rising and Brady spent 25 minutes going over game tape after a practice last month, but they eventually dropped the tablet to chat about books, leadership and life.

“There’s always a lot of carryover with football in life, whether that’s coaching or just living your day to day,” Rising said.

“Knowing what you’ve been through and understanding what you’re going through is just an important thing to always kind of remember.”

Rising’s guidance — from injuries to superstardom to dealing with his own new chapter — has certainly helped the young quarterback.

“He sounds like Tom Brady the way he speaks and the way he loves adversity,” Brady said. “He tells me you have to take it on, not run away from it.

“Being able to talk to him and understand what he’s gone through, it has really changed my life.”

Brady said he models his entire game after Rising. He wears No. 7, Rising’s former number. After suffering a concussion his freshman season, Brady switched from an Axiom helmet to the LIGHT helmet, which Rising wore in college.

“It means everything to Cam,” Nicko said.

Where Rising has helped Brady, he’s also learned a few things from the high school senior.

“He’s done way more than I’ve done in high school,” Rising said, smirking as Brady took a few more reps at practice. “I just know the sky’s the limit for him.”

Learning on the job

Coaching a four-star standout might be the easiest part of Rising’s new gig.

Panthers head coach Joe Smigiel will tell you that there’s been a learning curve for the former Utah quarterback, no matter his experience.

When the former Ute quarterback coached his first several practices, he was not shy about demanding changes, though he didn’t always go about it the right way. Rising once told Brady that he “didn’t like” how the offense was working on drills. Brady then told his father what Rising said.

“You should be able to come to me and talk to me about this,” the coach told his assistant the next day.

Newbury Park’s head coach often forgets the former Utah quarterback is only in his first year of coaching.

“The thing about Cam is, I do have to help him,” Joe said. “I just kind of skip over thinking he knows it all because he’s such a natural. You obviously only have to tell or correct him that one time, and he’s on his way.”

Still, Joe has had to help Brady adjust to Cam Rising’s arrival, which brought a new playbook, fresh fundamentals, and a completely different coaching style.

“Cam came in and said, ‘You’re not doing everything right,’” Joe recalled.

At first, Brady didn’t take the changes well. During fall camp, Joe even had to pull his son aside to call him out.

“How he was acting was bull—,” Joe said, referring to Brady’s attitude when Cam was trying to teach him new concepts.

But those growing pains are starting to fade.

One evening at dinner, Brady’s girlfriend started quizzing him on the new playbook and audible calls. To everyone’s surprise — but maybe not Rising’s — he was nailing nearly every read and play design.

They were, clearly, starting to get along just fine.

“The fact of the matter is, Cam’s having a lot of fun right now. In turn, that’s making everybody else around him have fun,” Joe said. “He’ll take over a program sooner than later.”

‘Always be a part of it’

Under the white haze of Panther Stadium’s lights, while the sun set over the peaks of Newbury Park’s mountains, Brady stomped to the sideline and threw his helmet on the ground, causing black turf pellets to cascade through the air.

The quarterback had just thrown his third interception of the night against Arroyo Grande High School last Friday. The Panthers needed a win, too, after falling in their season-opener.

And then there was Cam Rising, meeting his pupil on the metal bench, patting him on the back and educating him on what he did wrong on the play.

After each missed throw or interception, Rising was calm and collected. He didn’t curl his lip. He didn’t snap at Brady. Rising was already moving onto the next possession, calmly pointing to his mistake on the tablet and gently tapping Brady on the back of his helmet.

Rising is still making decisions like a quarterback — in control of the offense and guiding plays. He just no longer has a say on the outcome.

“One play never defines you as a football player, so you just have to be ready to go, go for the next down,” Rising said. “That’s the mentality.”

As the clock ticked down in the fourth quarter, Rising stalked the sideline — a laminated play sheet in hand — intently fixed on Brady, murmuring calls through the headset.

Brady and Newbury Park slowly marched up the field until they reached the goal line. On the drive’s final possession, Brady rolled right, tucked it and charged toward the end zone.

The play was reminiscent of Rising’s heroic plays on the Utes. In his first signature drive with Utah, the quarterback shimmied past a USC defender before extending the football for a game-winning two-point conversion.

Almost two years later, Rising would walk off the manicured field of Arizona State’s stadium, and into the locker room, holding his head low, unaware that he had just played his last snap of football forever.

When everything’s quiet, Rising still thinks about his time in Salt Lake City.

“I just enjoyed it,” Rising said of once leading the Utes. “It gave me a lot of great opportunities

“I’ll always cherish that time. I grew as a man there.”

Rising, admittedly, says he doesn’t know if coaching will be in his long-term plans, but “anything is possible,” he said.

What matters most is that he’s still involved with the game he loves. Yes, the injuries and the what-ifs of his career still linger in his mind, though he said he doesn’t care to talk about them now.

But while he’s working through his past, Rising finds happiness.

“I can’t imagine this is as fun as throwing four touchdowns against USC or something,” Brady said. “But being out here helps him.”

And Cam Rising is smiling, something he didn’t do a ton of during his final collegiate season or the dark months that followed.

“Football is something you invest so much time into,” he said. “You want to always be a part of it and give back to it as much as you can.

“That’s why I’m out here coaching right now.”

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