Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1545675
1 8 A U G U S T 2 0 2 6 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M / / / / / / / 2 0 2 6 F O O T B A L L P R E V I E W / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / T hose familiar Blue Bird school buses pulled up to Beaver Sta- dium right on schedule in April for the public unveiling of Penn State's 2026 football team. They came to a stop at the corner of Porter and Curtin roads and soon began disgorging players. That's where the familiarity ended. Many of the players who filed out of the buses were new to Penn State, hav- ing only arrived in State College a few months earlier. Of the 102 players listed on the Nittany Lions' spring roster, 51 had joined the program in January, either as transfers or as early-enrolling freshmen. Twenty-four players had arrived from Iowa State, a school that Penn State has never played in the 133-year history of its program. A year ago, the idea that nearly a quarter of PSU's 2026 roster would be made up of players from an unfa- miliar school in a distant conference would likely have struck many fans as preposterous. But there've been a fair number of preposterous hap- penings at Penn State over the past 10 months, from James Franklin's stunning downfall, to the shambolic coaching search that ensued, to the mi- raculous last-minute save that athletics director Patrick Kraft pulled off when he landed Matt Campbell to take charge of the program. The mass migration of Iowa State players to State College was just another in a series of head-spinning changes. READY READY TO ROLL TO ROLL Matt Campbell and a host of newcomers steer the PSU football program into a new era M AT T H E R B | M AT T. H E R B @ O N 3 . C O M