Penn State’s Matt Campbell is playing with house money

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He was hired because he’s good. Now he has to do it in a pretty demanding environment

Penn State was previewed by Arnav the other day.

I’m saying that Matt Campbell is playing with house money. That’s $70.5 million of house money.

His predecessor in Happy Valley, James Franklin, was/is a good coach. But when you don’t beat Ohio State and Michigan on a regular basis, when the big games slip through your fingers, being “good” isn’t good enough….not in State College. In eleven-plus years, Franklin was 104–45. One hundred four wins. Not good enough. So, the “house money”, as I’m calling it, is the good will and long leash he’ll probably have in order to correct what Franklin wasn’t able to do.

At his last job at Iowa State, before moving to Penn State, Matt Campbell was 72-55, with two losing seasons in ten years (3-9 in his first, 4-8 in 2022). It included seven bowl game appearances (3-4) and two first place finishes in the Big XII.

Campbell was just 32 when he got his first head coaching job at Toledo. In four full seasons as coach of the Rockets, Campbell went 34-15 (24-8 MAC). His team never finished lower than third in their division and he won the MAC West his final two years. His teams went to three bowl games in four years. In 14 years as a head coach, Campbell is 107-70. Quick reference: Greg Schiano is 99-108 in 17 years.

House money and a bit of a honeymoon from the schedule makers. Penn State doesn’t play Ohio State, Oregon, or Indiana this year. There are, though, Big Ten games against USC, Michigan and Washington. A fair challenge for the new guy, especially considering that a number of sites have Penn State with one of the easier strength of schedule. It goes from CBS Sports’ 10th easiest schedule in FBS to Bill Connelly saying that Campbell hit the scheduling “jackpot”. CBS noted that PSU could win nine games without topping a ranked opponent.

It seems like there is a little bit of the Curt Cignetti/Indiana model in how Campbell built his 2026 team at Penn State; Campbell signed 40 players from the transfer portal. This from a coach who had one of the highest retention rates while at Iowa State. Big changes in year one; not necessarily how he plans to coach/recruit moving forward. “At the end of the day, we want to be great developers of the young men in our program,” Campbell said in an appearance on the Goon & Ironhead Show. “We want to retain our players. We want to get our players to be great juniors and seniors, be great leaders and have the opportunity to finish their careers in our football program.”

Campbell is one of four coaches on Rutgers’ schedule who are in their first year at their school, along with Ted White (Howard), Kyle Whittingham (Michigan), and Pat Fitzgerald (Michigan State).

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