At long last, Penn State’s coaching search looks to be coming to an end.
Sources told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger that the Nittany Lions are in the final stages of negotiations to hire Iowa State coach Matt Campbell as their new head coach.
Campbell’s potential hire comes after Penn State was one of the first power conference schools to make a coaching move during the 2025 season when it fired James Franklin after a three-game losing streak.
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That head start on the coaching carousel didn’t seem to do much good. As six teams across the country hired new coaches within hours of the 2025 regular season ending, Penn State’s search continued. BYU coach Kalani Sitake spurned the Nittany Lions to stay with the Cougars ahead of the Big 12 title game on Saturday and Louisville coach Jeff Brohm also reportedly rebuffed overtures from Penn State.
Campbell has turned Iowa State into a perennial winner since he was hired from Toledo after the 2015 season. The Cyclones are 72-55 over his 10 seasons in charge and have just two losing seasons in that span. Iowa State has won at least eight games five times under Campbell and made it to the Big 12 championship game a season ago before losing to Arizona State with a trip to the College Football Playoff on the line.
Toledo was 35-15 in Campbell’s five seasons in charge. An Ohio native, he was an assistant for Toledo and Bowling Green before taking the Rockets job and played college football at Division III powerhouse Mount Union.
Iowa State had six straight losing seasons before Campbell arrived and its five-year bowl streak between 2017 and 2021 is the longest in school history. Campbell is by far the winningest coach in Iowa State history with 16 wins more than Dan McCarney’s 56, though McCarney’s teams lost 85 games over his 12 years in charge. McCarney and Clay Stapleton (42-53) are the only two other Iowa State coaches to be with the program at least 10 seasons.
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Campbell would take over a Penn State program that had massive expectations ahead of the 2025 season. The Nittany Lions were the No. 2 team in the preseason AP Top 25 and started 3-0 before an overtime loss to Oregon started a downward spiral. Penn State then lost to UCLA on the road and then at home to Northwestern. That loss to the Wildcats spelled the end of Franklin’s tenure.
Penn State lost three more games to fall to 3-6 under interim coach Terry Smith before winning its final three games to get bowl eligible. Smith, a former Penn State receiver, has been a coach at the school for over a decade. He was the team’s associate head coach and cornerbacks coach for four-plus seasons before taking over as the interim coach.
