I’ll continue to question some things about Penn State’s upcoming season, even though I’m very excited to see what Matt Campbell can do with this roster, which I believe can be very good.
While Penn State looks to be a decent team, I still don’t think it is anywhere near as good as it was a season ago. We have to remember now that a lot went wrong for Penn State last year, however, and the hope is that all of that is behind the program.
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Penn State made some major changes after firing head coach James Franklin and brought in Campbell to lead the program long-term.
While Campbell is a great coach in his own right, he doesn’t have the same success that Franklin had at the highest level in the Big Ten.
Most of that is because he hasn’t coached in the Big Ten, which, while decent, isn’t as promising as some of Franklin’s work during his time in Happy Valley. That’s another question I do think these Nittany Lions have to answer in the short and long term, as one writer recently noted.
“It was Franklin’s anchor that his teams had problems against the top ten powerhouses – getting the Nittany Lions to the 2024 season College Football Playoff semifinals basically bought him a fat load of jack squat when it came to national respect – but he won a whole lot of games against everyone else. Campbell won a lot of games at Iowa State, averaging over seven wins a season at a place not used to being a steady winner.
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“But he won just two bowl games, and one was the 2024 Pop-Tarts, thanks to Miami star quarterback Cam Ward tapping out at halftime,” Pete Fiutak of CFN wrote.
Campbell isn’t coming to Penn State to beat teams that everybody knows the program should.
Beating schools like Rutgers, Northwestern, and some of the other bottom feeders in the Big Ten isn’t exactly why Penn State is one of the most expensive teams in America, or why it brought in a coach it thinks can make a major impact for the university. His job is to beat the likes of Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, and other big boys out west. Right now, however, it isn’t exactly like he’s done that throughout much of his career.
