STATE COLLEGE, PA - NOVEMBER 22: Yvan Kemajou #99 of the Penn State Nittany Lions sacks TJ Lateef #14 of the Nebraska Cornhuskers during the first half at West Shore Home Field at Beaver Stadium on November 22, 2025 in State College, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images) | Getty Images

Special thanks to Andrew Burd and Vince Fadale of The Nittany Blues for joining us to discuss Penn State’s roster on this week’s podcast:

At the time of his firing from Penn State last fall James Franklin was the 9^th longest tenured head coach in FBS as he had been in Happy Valley since January of 2014.

Under Franklin, Penn State was one of the most consistent programs in all of college football. Between 2016 to 2024 Penn State finished between 5-15 in the final AP poll 6 of the 9 seasons. The 3 exceptions being; a No. 17 finish, the COVID year, and a true outlier 2021 season.

This consistency of almost always being a Top 15 team allowed Penn State to appear in 5 NY6 bowl games, going 3-2 in those games, and then appear in the inaugural 12 team CFP where the Nittany Lions picked up two wins to reach the semi-finals before falling short against Notre Dame.

However, Penn State’s consistent inability to break through into the Top 5 meant that Franklin’s teams had the following records:

1-15 Against Top 5 Teams with the average margin in those games being a 13-point loss – largely at the hands of Ohio State and Michigan
3-7 Against Michigan with the average margin in those games being an 8-point loss
1-11 Against Ohio State with the average margin in those games being a 10-point loss
101-27 Against everyone not named Ohio State and Michigan

This almost predictable Floor and Ceiling at Penn State where they would reliably lose to Top 5 teams and reliably beat everyone else brewed a unique type of frustration within the fanbase and evidently the athletic department as well. That frustration came to a head this past season, which was supposed to be the year Penn State finally broke through in the positive direction.

After the Nittany Lions lost to Northwestern this past October Penn State fired Franklin. The loss was the 3^rd consecutive loss early in the season for the Nittany Lions, and the 2^nd straight loss where they were favored by over 20 points to an unranked opponent.

It’s unnecessary and beyond the scope of this article to fully unpack the reasons for Penn State’s 2025 collapse and the politics behind Franklin’s firing – our only concerns are the state of the program the new staff inherits and if there are lingering issues as a result. In summary, our conclusion is that Penn State institutionally remains on a strong footing, the available personnel and resource access look good albeit with a few momentary stronger and weaker patches detailed in this article, and the recent underperformance was a simple result of management mistakes by the previous staff which shouldn’t do any lasting damage.

To briefly sketch out the last point: in studying Coach Franklin’s teams for multiple years ATQ had noticed some long-running issues at Penn State regarding the wide receiver room, quarterback competition, and defensive balance between the front and back ends, as well as other playcalling and pace of play issues. While these issues were noticeable in every game and put a ceiling on the program’s annual record since comparably talented opponents weren’t shackled in the same ways, the program was still strong enough to overcome the drag and beat weaker competition, resulting in the widely observed perennial “10-2 purgatory.”

What appears to have happened in 2025, when several key players returned from a team that made a deep playoff run the year before and so a title run was natural to expect, was that Franklin decided to implement some changes to “get over the hump.” But instead of changing the problematic areas of his team, he seems to have made a second set of mistakes: misidentifying where the issues were that had held his program back. That led to a third set of mistakes: counterproductively changing areas of his team that had made Penn State able to beat weak teams while doing nothing to let them beat strong teams. The result was rapid self-destruction.

It’s therefore not difficult to imagine that a program which draws the same talent with comparable staff quality but simply doesn’t make foolish mistakes in misidentifying and failing to address problems should do well at Penn State. As we discussed on the podcast, a change of direction to find a more resourceful staff seemed appropriate.

That new direction is former Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell. This chart below documents the winning percentage of every Iowa State head coach since the end of World War 2 and helps explain why some think Campbell may be a miracle worker.

Here are some of Cambell’s other accomplishments from his time at Iowa State

One of only two Cyclone head coaches with a winning record post WW1
- The other is Earle Bruce who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2002
Head coach for 37% of Iowa State’s Total Bowl Games and 50% of Iowa State’s Total bowl Wins
Was head coach for 50% of Iowa State’s AP Top 25 Finishes (2 of 4)
Was the only coach to guide the Cyclones to an AP Top 15 finish, doing so twice

Duck fans may be familiar with Campbell and his Iowa State teams from playing against them in the 2021 Fiesta Bowl. That 2020 team finished 10^th in the country per F+, the best team of Campbell’s tenure. On average Campbell’s Iowa State teams per F+ where:

The Number 32 team in College Football with a rating of 0.73
The Number 42 offence in college football with a rating of 0.50
The Number 32 defense in college football with a rating of 0.77

Here are Campbell’s teams and units by year by F+ rating:

Campbell on average was able to field a Top 35 team while his high school recruiting classes averaged a finish of 50^th per the 247 composite rankings, which is part of the reason he earned the reputation of a coach that is able to overperform in on-field results vs. underlying talent.

Penn State’s thinking behind hiring Campbell is clearly that he will continue to field teams that outperform their talent rating, but with even greater levels of raw talent in Happy Valley. It tends not to actually translate exactly that smoothly – diminishing returns kick in near the top of the talent spectrum, and there’s a different skillset in refining elite talent as opposed to finding diamonds in the rough. But one doesn’t consistently overperform by making foolish mistakes or allowing problems to linger, and Vince mentioned several examples on the podcast of Campbell immediately addressing issues similar to ones which frustrated Penn State fans for years.

Campbell brought over 23 transfers from Iowa State which makes up 61% of the Nittany Lions 2026 transfer portal class. In comparison to the 2 other first year B1G coaches that coached FBS College football last season:

Michigan brought in 5 transfers from Utah that makes up 31% of their portal class
UCLA brought in 10 transfers from JMU that makes up 24% of their portal class

Here is the breakup of those transfers from Iowa State by years of eligibility remaining:

What I found interesting is that 17 of the 23 transfers...

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