Penn State’s tumultuous 54-day search to find its next football coach has come to an end.
Following several swings and misses, Penn State came to an agreement with Iowa State’s Matt Campbell on Friday night to become the Nittany Lions’ 17th head coach.
Campbell, 46, replaces James Franklin, who was fired Oct. 12 after three straight losses derailed a promising campaign.
“Coach Campbell is, without a doubt, the right leader at the right time for Penn State football,” athletic director Pat Kraft said in a statement. “He is a stellar coach with a proven track record of success, and his values, character and approach to leading student-athletes to success on and off the field align perfectly with the traditions and values of Penn State.”
Kraft said Campbell will be introduced Monday pending approval of terms by the Penn State Board of Trustees’ Equity and Human Resources Committee.
According to reports, Campbell agreed to an eight-year contract, and Penn State will commit about $30 million in NIL money and $17 million for assistant coaches.
Kraft said interim coach Terry Smith will remain with the program.
“I want to express my deepest gratitude to coach Terry Smith for stepping up when we needed him the most and for rallying our team to finish this season with three straight wins,” Kraft said. “Coach Smith bleeds blue and white and pours his entire heart and soul into Penn State football.”
A three-time Big 12 Coach of the Year (2017, 2018, 2020), Campbell is the winningest coach in Cyclones program history, having guided the team to a 72-55 (50-40 Big 12) record since taking the helm in 2016.
This year, the Cyclones went 8-4 (5-4), tying for seventh place in the Big 12 and await word on a postseason bowl.
A Massillon, Ohio, native, Campbell played the first year of his collegiate career at Pitt in 1998 before transferring to Mount Union, where he played from 1999-2002.
Before coaching at Iowa State, he led Toledo to a 34-15 record from 2012-15. He was an assistant there for three years beginning in 2009. His first coaching stop was as a graduate assistant with Bowling Green from 2003-04 before returning to Mount Union from 2007-08.
“As we start this exciting next chapter for our football program with Coach Campbell at the helm, the future is bright,” Kraft said. “We will continue to build upon and elevate the high standard that is the hallmark of our program.”
Few programs entered the 2025 campaign with higher expectations than the Nittany Lions, who achieved a preseason No. 2 national ranking and came off a three-point loss to Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff semifinals a year ago. Penn State finished 13-3 (8-1 Big Ten) in 2024.
The Nittany Lions opened this season 3-0 but lost at home in double overtime to No. 6 Oregon, a defeat that would prove to be the beginning of Franklin’s undoing.
The next week, Penn State fell to 0-4 UCLA, then one of the worst teams in the country that was under the guidance of interim coach Tim Skipper in the aftermath of DeShaun Foster’s Sept. 14 firing.
Things went from bad to worse for the Nittany Lions, who fell out of the AP Top 25 and proceeded to lose 22-21 to Northwestern on Oct. 11.
A day later, on top of losing quarterback Drew Allar for the season because of injury, Kraft announced a leadership change, relieving Franklin.
Smith, an associate head coach and original member of Franklin’s staff, took over and led the Nittany Lions to a 6-6 finish and bowl eligibility.
Franklin went 104-45 (64-36) in parts of 12 seasons in Happy Valley.
Five of his teams (2016, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2024) earned end-of-year top-10 national rankings.
Including CFP play, Franklin went 6-6 in the postseason, as his teams lost the 2016 Rose Bowl, won the next year’s Fiesta Bowl, won the Cotton Bowl in 2019 and were victorious in the 2022 Rose Bowl.
But Franklin regularly hit a ceiling when it came to squaring off against elite opposition.
Against top-10 foes, Franklin’s teams were 4-21, including a 1-18 mark against top 10-ranked Big Ten teams. Franklin went 1-10 against Ohio State and 3-7 vs. Michigan.
Coming off such a strong 2024 campaign and having led Penn State to six double-digit win totals, Franklin immediately emerged as one of the most attractive coaching candidates on the market.
Five weeks after his firing at Penn State, Virginia Tech named him coach Nov. 17. He since has introduced the Hokies’ 2026 recruiting class, which included 11 prospects formerly committed to the Nittany Lions.
Conversely, Kraft struggled to find Franklin’s replacement.
Most recently, he failed to lure Brigham Young’s Kalani Sitake, who instead inked a new long-term deal to stay put in Provo, Utah.
Kraft’s earlier attempts at identifying Penn State’s new coach met with similar results.
Indiana’s Curt Cignetti, Nebraska’s Matt Rhule, Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz, Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea and Louisville’s Jeff Brohm — all linked to Kraft’s coaching search — also stayed put, signing extensions with their schools.
On3 reported that Penn State’s search wound up netting all the potential suitors who Kraft courted $370.8 million worth in new contracts.
Upon touching down in State College, Campbell faces significant challenges.
For starters, the upending of the program left Penn State with only two signees for the 2026 class.
Allar and plenty more contributors also will depart the program through graduation, transfer or declaring for the NFL Draft.
Per the Des Moines Register, Campbell was earning just over $5 million, not including bonuses, this season. His buyout would exceed $35 million.
In August, Campbell was extended at Iowa State a year after leading the Cyclones to their first 11-win season, a victory in the Pop Tarts Bowl and a No. 15 end-of-season ranking.
