Almost two months after firing James Franklin, who, less than a year ago, led the Nittany Lions to the College Football Playoff semifinal, Penn State is in the process of hiring a program-builder who develops talent well and has overachieved at an under-resourced, historically bad program. Sound familiar?
While Matt Campbell had a much longer run at Iowa State than James Franklin did at Vanderbilt before he made the leap to Penn State, their resumes are strikingly similar. They’re CEO-type head coaches who did more with less and elevated programs to levels of success they had either never experienced before or hadn’t in more than a few years.
Campbell, at 46, is a bit older than Franklin was when he took the job in Happy Valley, replacing Bill O’Brien, now 53, and the path to hiring him was much longer and more winding, but Penn State is hiring another James Franklin, and as scary as that may be to Penn State fans, it’s not a bad thing.
Matt Campbell was the best Penn State could do after striking out on top candidates
Penn State’s coaching search began with dreams of Curt Cignetti uprooting his upstart Indiana program and bringing it to Happy Valley, or Mike Elko ditching Texas A&M to head back to the Northeast. But in the NIL and revenue-sharing era, when any program can attract talent as long as they can afford it, that was never going to happen. As for the Matt Rhule, Eli Drinkwitz, Clark Lea, and Jeff Brohm group, Campbell is just as good a candidate, if not better than all of them.
It’s not long ago that Campbell was one of the hottest names on the coaching market. The turnaround that he orchestrated in Ames had him rumored for NFL jobs, but because he stayed and, despite winning, routinely bumped his head on the ceiling of that program, his stock cooled considerably. Now, if the deal gets finalized, he’ll have a chance at a program with a much higher ceiling.
In that NIL era, Penn State is not the powerhouse that Ohio State, Oregon, Michigan, and even USC are, in terms of their war chest of financial resources, but it’s in the second tier of the Big Ten and much better equipped than Iowa State, where Campbell competed for Big 12 titles.
So, Campbell will do what Franklin did. Hire good coordinators, recruit well, develop talent, and take his chances against the best teams in the Big Ten. Some of Franklin’s failures in those games were rooted in poor game management and conservative decision-making. But luck is a real component, and now Penn State gets to reset the clock and hope Campbell has better big-game fortune than his predecessor.
He hasn’t exactly been known as a great big-game coach, most recently getting blown out by Arizona State in last year’s Big 12 Championship Game with a spot in the CFP on the line.
This has always been the case, but more than ever, college football is a donor-driven sport. Maybe Campbell is another James Franklin. It’s hard to argue that he’s definitively better, but he is different in that he’s literally a fresh face with a new message. Oftentimes, that’s enough to reinvigorate a donor base because once you lose that investment, you lose talent, and there aren’t many escape routes out of that death spiral.
If Penn State can get its money aligned behind Campbell, when so many boosters were pushing for Terry Smith to have the interim tag removed, this has a great chance of working. Even if it doesn’t, Campbell has a better chance to win now than he ever did in Ames. So, like a head coach making a lateral move, Penn State resets the clock and will try it again.