When college and pro coaches are hired in any sport, most of them handle their introductory press conferences with aplomb.
Matt Campbell was no different earlier this week when he spoke in front of the Penn State football community for the first time. He said all the right things.
He used requisite words such as trust, relationships, culture and grit.
He touched on the history and tradition of the Nittany Lions and mentioned Todd Blackledge, Jack Ham, Courtney Brown, Kerry Collins, Saquon Barkley and Joe Paterno.
He praised Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi and director of athletics Pat Kraft.
He complimented James Franklin, the man he’s replacing, and Bill O’Brien, who was instrumental in holding the program together after the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
But it was after he stepped away from the cameras and met with 11 beat reporters for 30 minutes that who and what Campbell is became even clearer.
In that meeting, he seemed genuine, sensitive and humble.
“I don’t even know if I could put on a scale of how hard it was (to leave Iowa State after 10 seasons),” Campbell said. “It was really hard, at times paralyzingly hard to make the decision. You’ll find out there’s nothing more important than my word and relationships.
“I felt like there was a part of me maybe not following through with my word with the young men who came to play for us and stayed to play for us.”
He said he doesn’t have an agent, even though someone had to negotiate his seven-year Penn State contract, which is worth a guaranteed $80.5 million. He said he agreed to take two other head coaching jobs in the past before he slept on it and changed his mind.
“I’m not a great self-promoter,” Campbell said. “I could be really bad at that. It’s not about the head football coach, even though we love to make it that way. It’s about the team.”
He’s regarded as a coach who focuses on the process and making his players better. He enjoyed success at Iowa State, which had one of the lowest NIL budgets and was once regarded as one of the worst Division I programs in the country.
Like Franklin, he prioritizes high school recruiting over the transfer portal.
“I know there’s a great foundation here with some great players,” he said. “We’re going to have to do a great job of making sure those young men stay here and then build the right group around them and still not flinch away from development and recruiting high school players.
“Sacrificing the future for one day or one season, we’re really going to have to be smarter than everybody and to walk a fine line.”
Campbell will have more financial backing at Penn State than he had at Iowa State and better facilities, which he saw for the first time when he arrived last Sunday in State College.
“The facilities are really impressive,” he said. “I know Pat is a go-getter and he’s going to have the best of the best. But it’s not about the facilities. It’s about the people. That’s what makes it come to life.
“It’s about the people and it’s aligning the people going in the same place at the same time in the same direction.”
He also spoke about his greatest coaching influences: his father, Rick, who coached against him at a rival high school in Massillon, Ohio; his high school coach, Rick Shepas; and Larry Kehres, his coach at NCAA Division III power Mount Union.
Kehres guided the Purple Raiders to a record 11 national titles, including three when Campbell was a defensive lineman there and two when he was an assistant coach.
“He had a calmness that he was going to demand a standard of excellence in everything you did,” Campbell said about Kehres. “But he also had this unbelievable ability to create a relationship with you, create trust.
“Everybody was coached a little bit differently based on who they were and how they responded to it. He took the time to figure those things out.”
Penn State received praise across the country for hiring Campbell, despite the clumsy and lengthy search. But so did Franklin’s hirings of Andy Kotelnicki as offensive coordinator and Jim Knowles as defensive coordinator and they didn’t work out.
No one knows if Campbell will be successful, but he’s what the Lions need at the moment. While Franklin was organized as the CEO of the program, Campbell’s regarded as “a ball coach,” someone who often got the most out of his players at Iowa State and Toledo before that.
“We have a process,” he said. “Nobody will be better at developing our student-athletes and our high school football players than us. We’ve proven that every step of the way.
“I think you can ask (NFL players) Brock Purdy, Breece Hall, David Montgomery, Will McDonald. The flash and the stars, that’s cool on signing day. But winning football games on Saturday is what we’re going to be about.”
