Editor’s Note: This is the second in a five-part series on the UL Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2026, which will be honored Friday. Tickets for the induction to be held at the McElligott Club at Our Lady of Lourdes Stadium are available from the Ragin’ Cajun Athletic Foundation at RCAF@louisiana.edu or by calling (337) 851-7223.
Rickey Bustle admits he didn’t know a lot about the personnel he inherited when he took over as the UL football coach in 2002.
It didn’t take Bustle and his staff long to figure out they had a weapon at wide receiver, even though Fred Stamps’ numbers were average over his first two seasons.
“The thing that I saw, and I told our staff this, he’s going to develop and he’s going to be great for us,” Bustle said. “He had great ball instincts, cutting people off to getting to a ball, flattening it out. That’s things you see in the guys at the next level. It’s not something that comes natural and sometimes it doesn’t make sense until you’re a junior or senior.”
Fast forward two years, and the New Orleans product is the second-leading receiver in UL football history. Fast forward another decade, and he’s retiring as a legend of the Edmonton franchise in the Canadian Football League.
“He developed into one of the best wide receivers I’ve ever been around … Virginia Tech, South Carolina, everywhere,” Bustle said. “He was as good as I’ve ever been around.”
Stamps will be inducted into the UL Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday as part of a weekend of activities. He will be inducted along with baseball standout Dylan Moore, women’s basketball standard-setter Tenna Cooper, three-time All-America triple jumper Lawrence Willis and former UL football coach Nelson Stokley.
Stamps finished his four-year career second all-time at UL in career receptions (180) and receiving yards (2,789), both behindHall of Famer Brandon Stokley. He still holds the school record for consecutive games with a reception (44) and is one of three players in school history with a 1,000-yard receiving season (1,002 yards as a junior in 2002).
He averaged 18.6 yards per catch in that 2002 season, the highest average in school history for a receiver with a minimum of 40 catches. His eight touchdown catches that year led the team in scoring — something that no other wide receiver has accomplished in the 23 years since Stamps finished his career.
He accomplished all of that without ever playing on a winning team or in a bowl game.
“I nicknamed him Ball Hawk, because he was not going to let anyone else catch it,” Bustle said. “He had great hands and great body posture when it came to catching. He was going to box you out if you were a defender and throw those hands up there and just snag it.
“It didn’t take us long to figure out he was a guy we had to get the ball to, and what we did offensively I think exposed him in a good way. We moved him around to different places and got the ball to him. There were some things we were doing that were NFL-type routes, and he really grew into it as a junior and senior.”
Stamps led UL in receiving both of those years and earned first-team All-Sun Belt Conference honors both years. He had a 13-reception, 201-yard game (both second-most all-time) along with three touchdowns in a Sun Belt meeting with Middle Tennessee State, and later that year he added UL’s third-highest receiving yardage total with 198 yards against UL-Monroe.
Stamps was not drafted by an NFL team and had stints on practice squads with San Francisco, Jacksonville and Baltimore before finding the perfect fit for his talents in the pass-happy CFL. He played nine seasons in the league, eight with Edmonton and a final year with the Montreal Alouettes.
He was All-CFL four times in the media vote and five times in the players’ vote, and he had 531 catches for 8,411 yards, both ranking in the CFL all-time top 50. He is Edmonton’s second all-time leader in yardage (7,932) and third in career catches (496). He led the team in receiving five straight years, two of which he led the entire league.
Stamps had receptions in 111 straight games (13th best in CFL history) and started 130 of his 133 career games.
“It didn’t surprise me at all that he did so many good things in Canada,” Bustle said. “He took coaching so well. He wasn’t a guy that was going to sulk if you got after him because he had high aspirations of playing pro football. You knew he was going to be special.”
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