Penn State is in talks to name Iowa State’s Matt Campbell as its next head football coach, according to reports.
Multiple outlets, including The Athletic and ESPN, citing anonymous sources, reported talks between Campbell and the Nittany Lions were progressing.
Campbell’s potential hire comes nearly two months after the Nittany Lions fired longtime coach James Franklin midway through his 12th season following an 0-3 start in Big Ten play.
The Nittany Lions began the year ranked No. 2 after advancing to last year’s CFP semifinals. They went 3-3 under interim coach Terry Smith and are currently awaiting a bowl assignment.
Campbell, Iowa State’s all-time winningest coach, went 72-55 for a Cyclone program that was 489-622-45 with just three bowl wins over its 133-year history before his arrival. Campbell’s 10-year tenure in Ames includes eight winning seasons, three bowl wins and the program’s only 11-win campaign last year, when Iowa State reached the Big 12 championship game.
Campbell, who was previously the head coach at Toledo for five years before joining the Cyclones, is 107-70 overall as a head coach. He signed a contract extension at Iowa State in August worth $5 million per year until 2032, with a buyout of $2 million.
An Ohio native, Campbell would become Penn State’s 17th full-time coach. He would take over a team that missed big during the early signing period that began on Wednesday.
Penn State, the second Power Four program to fire its coach this season, signed only two players toward its 2026 recruiting class this week. The Nittany Lions have no commitments in the 2027 class.
Many of those who had previously committed to Penn State flipped to Virginia Tech, where Franklin was hired last month following a tenure in Happy Valley that yielded a Big Ten championship in 2016, a Rose Bowl win and a trip to the CFP semifinals. Franklin, however, struggled to win big games. Penn State went just 4-21 against teams ranked in the top 10 during his 11-plus seasons.
Now, current Nittany Lions will have to weigh whether or not to stick around and play for Campbell, who’s done a lot with a little in Ames while reportedly passing on other job offers, including overtures from the NFL.
Should he take the job, Campbell will walk into a somewhat thorny situation where he did not appear to be among the top choices during an unexpectedly lengthy process. Many potential candidates appeared to sign lucrative extensions at their current schools instead, including BYU’s Kalani Sitake. Per the Athletic, Penn State also had contact with Bob Chesney before he went to UCLA and Pat Fitzgerald prior to his going to Michigan State, and there was also the “chatter” surrounding Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz and Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea, both of whom signed extensions like Sitake rather than leave for Happy Valley.
As Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft conducted his search without the aid of a search committee, a large contingent of Penn State players campaigned for the blunt-talking Smith to be named the permanent coach.
After the Nittany Lions’ win over Nebraska on Nov. 22, players held up “HIRE TERRY SMITH!” signs on the sidelines. A handful flashed the signs to Kraft, who walked off the field with an arm around Smith, a Penn State alum who played for Joe Paterno and is a veteran of Franklin’s staff.
A fanbase and athletic department accustomed to seeing the same coach roaming the Penn State sideline for 46 years as Paterno did has never gone this long without a gridiron leader.
The search to find Paterno’s permanent successor during the most tumultuous season in program history took 40 days in 2011. Paterno was fired on Nov. 9 in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal and then-acting athletic director Dave Joyner announced a six-person search committee on Nov. 28. The program introduced Bill O’Brien on Jan. 7.
Two years later, O’Brien informed Penn State that he was taking the Houston Texans job on Jan. 2 and Penn State introduced Franklin nine days later to massive fanfare.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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