With a finite limit on how long college athletes can play for their school, head coaches are arguably the most important aspect of any team. Penn State has had the luxury of having multiple long-term coaches in Joe Paterno and James Franklin.
Franklin was relieved of his duties this past season, which made way for Terry Smith to land the interim job. While Smith was solid, the Nittany Lions looked elsewhere and settled on Matt Campbell to be the school’s next head coach. Campbell comes over from Iowa State, where he made a name for himself by resurrecting a program that had been lifeless for decades.
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His accomplishments with the Cyclones did not go unnoticed as Bruce Feldman of The Athletic rated him as the 11th best coach in all of college football. Campbell produced more than half of the winning seasons in Iowa State’s history, and now he has a chance to continue climbing the ladder at Penn State, where he will have the national spotlight and exponentially more resources to acquire more talent.
Franklin, who is now running the show with Virginia Tech, landed a few spots behind Campbell at No. 14. We know from his time at Happy Valley that Franklin is a tremendous floor raiser, so the Hokies are banking on him bringing that level of consistency and respectability to them. It was a chaotic exit for Franklin, but it seems like things may end up working out for both coaches.
For Campbell, there is some pressure to perform now that he will be battling some of the greatest coaches in the sport in one of the best conferences in the nation. Seven other Big Ten coaches made Feldman’s list as well and four of them are above Campbell, so the Nittany Lions’ new head man will face much stronger competition than he did in the Big 12.
Michigan’s new head coach Kyle Whittingham is just a couple of spots ahead of Campbell at No. 9. The two coaches share a ton of similarities in the way that they each came from smaller schools where they cultivated their own eras of prosperity.
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Dan Lanning hasn’t coached the Oregon Ducks for nearly as long as Ryan Day has been with Ohio State, but both coaches have built their teams into well-oiled machines. They were ranked 6th and 3rd on this list respectively as they both enter the year with national championship aspirations. Coming in at No. 1 was none other than Curt Cignetti, who just led the Indiana Hoosiers to the promised land.
There are high hopes for Campbell at Penn State, but he better be prepared to go to war on a weekly basis with some of the brightest minds in the game.
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This article originally appeared on Nittany Lions Wire: The Athletic college football coach rankings: Where is Matt Campbell?
