- Penn State’s 54-day coaching search has reportedly moved to Iowa State’s Matt Campbell.
- The search follows the controversial mid-season firing of coach James Franklin.
- Iowa State faces a significant financial gap, making it difficult to compete with Penn State’s resources.
We’re not splitting atoms here. We’re talking about hiring a football coach.
Yet Penn State has somehow botched this rather simple process of firing and hiring a coach so badly, this train wreck of what not to do will be remembered for decades to come.
Especially if the Lions somehow stumble into the best hire of the offseason, and land Iowa State’s Matt Campbell.
We learned, according to multiple reports, that Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft’s painful 54-day coaching search has moved to Campbell, the 46-year-old who has spent 10 seasons at Iowa State despite the elite of football trying to pry him away.
Southern California tried, so did Notre Dame. So did the Bears, Jets, Browns and Lions of the NFL.
He told everyone no, and instead continued to build in the peaceful solitude of yesteryear at Iowa State. Where what’s most important to him — the very principles of what college sports should be — are embraced.
Developing players and young men. The value of a quality education. The college experience. Personal growth.
Now Campbell is on the verge of leaving what he carefully constructed, for a job with an athletic director who fired James Franklin after he averaged 10 wins a season. Worse, Kraft fired Franklin six games into this season, after Franklin brought Penn State to within a play — one play — of advancing to last year’s College Football Playoff national championship game.
So yeah, of course this is how it would all play out in State College. The most brutal firing in maybe the modern era of the game, followed by Penn State stumbling into Campbell because it missed on multiple other opportunities.
And not only did the Lions miss, they raised an already stratospheric coaching market by forcing schools to pay top dollar to coaches who were never leaving for Penn State in the first place.
Curt Cignetti isn’t leaving a potential national championship team at Indiana. Matt Rhule, despite being best friends with Kraft, isn’t leaving what he’s building at Nebraska — isn’t looking former five-star quarterback Dylan Raiola in the face and telling him he’s escaping.
Clark Lea can (and more than likely will) get a lifetime deal one day from Vanderbilt, and Eli Drinkwitz is winning 9 or 10 games annually at Missouri despite playing in the toughest conference in college football.
Seeing those realities is simply reading the room. Or Coaching Search 101.
Meanwhile, there’s Campbell, whose school is trying its best to compete financially with the heavy hitters of the sport and failing miserably. The Iowa State athletic department has a $147 million “funding gap” through fiscal 2031.
Iowa State can’t remotely compare to Penn State with the ability to generate revenue for private NIL deals, the key to attracting elite high school and transfer portal players. Penn State showed this offseason how committed, going all-in with a handful of high-dollar transfer portal additions.
Meanwhile, Campbell has annually done more with less, cobbling together lower-tier high school recruits and second-level portal additions while coaching and developing them as well as anyone in the game.
Iowa State just finished national signing day with the 50th-ranked high school recruiting class, according to the 247Sports composite. The class has one four-star recruit, and 21 three-star — and not one of the 22 are nationally ranked.
For years, members of Campbell’s coaching fraternity wondered what he could do with a blue blood budget, and the ability to recruit and coach elite-level talent. Now he’s closer than ever to getting that opportunity if he wants it.
Unless Kraft fails to read the room again.
