Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1541990
J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 6 2 1 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 72-55 under his leadership, a solid record that looks even more impressive when you consider that the team had gone 11-37 in the four seasons predating his arrival in 2016. Now, however, Campbell is being asked to do more with more. The Nittany Li- ons are getting set to make major invest- ments in their NIL operation, and they've already spent lavishly on their football facilities, with the ongoing $700 million overhaul of Beaver Stadium being only the most prominent example. In return for those expenditures, Penn State wants to be better than it was under Franklin. That's not going to be easy, given that Franklin's 104 career victories left him tied with Rip Engle as the second- winningest coach in program history. But PSU won only one Big Ten champion- ship during his 12-year tenure and went 1-10 against Ohio State, the conference's benchmark for excellence. Campbell's task is to help close that gap with the Buckeyes. It's a very differ- ent challenge than the one he accepted at Iowa State, and while he's well aware that it's a punishingly high standard he's being asked to meet, he's bringing a no-risk, no-reward mentality to the pursuit. "I've always said, our scars are our su- per power," he explained. "If you're hum- ble enough to grow through success and failure, then you continue to put yourself in position to be the best. It's when you stop growing that failure starts to seep in. I've had championship expectations every step of the way." 'He's The Guy' While Campbell's path to Penn State was expeditious, to say the least, Penn State's path to Campbell was long, bumpy and fraught with dead ends. It also re- quired the university's leadership team to execute a high-speed U-turn at the end. As Kraft noted dryly at Campbell's introduction, "It'll probably be a Netflix documentary at some point." Penn State had fired Franklin on Oct. 12, one day after the Nittany Lions suffered their third consecutive defeat, a dreary 22-21 setback against unranked North- western. The names that were soon be- ing floated in the media as potential re- placements included coaches with Penn State ties (Nebraska's Matt Rhule, Duke's Manny Diaz) or Northeastern roots (Texas A&M's Mike Elko, Indiana's Curt Cignetti), along with some rising stars (James Madison's Bob Chesney, Oregon's Will Stein, Ohio State's Brian Hartline) and a few wild long shots from both the coaching ranks (Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman, Alabama's Kalen DeBoer) and TV (Nick Saban, Urban Meyer). In the weeks that followed, Chesney, Stein and Hartline all found new em- ployment at other schools, the latter two moving up from coordinator posts to head coaching jobs. Eight other candidates parlayed Penn State's interest into con- tract extensions at their current schools. By BWI's calculations, the Lions' coach- ing search netted $300 million in exten- sion money for coaches who had been linked to the opening. While the public's attention was fo- cused on the likes of Elko and Rhule, the real action was farther west, where Penn State had found an off-the-radar candi- date in BYU's Kalani Sitake. The discus- sions between Sitake and PSU reportedly began heating up in November. By early December, a deal seemed imminent. And then, suddenly, it didn't. When the BYU community learned that Sitake was seriously interested, some of its most prominent members mobilized to keep him in Provo. The CEO of the Crumbl bakery chain was among those who in- tervened, promising resources that would help the Cougars take the next step to- ward title contention. Swayed by the outpouring of support, which included advice from Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid, former BYU and San Francisco 49ers star Steve Young, and Patti Edwards, wife of the late BYU coach "From this day forward we're going to wake up every single day in this football program and build championship habits. We're going to do it one day at a time and do it from the ground up. We're going to do it in a football program that's going to demand toughness — mental and physical." C A M P B E L L Campbell was greeted by a crowd of well-wishers when he arrived at State College Regional Airport on Dec. 7. He said his message to fans was that he was eager to "make you proud of this football team, how we play, how we do things." PHOTO BY MARK SELDERS/ PENN STATE ATHLETICS