WHEN MATT CAMPBELL was introduced as an Iowa state football coach on November 30, 2015, he shared a story about a trip to Ames the year before with Toledo.
The team bus arrived at Jack Trice Stadium early, so Campbell, then coach of Toledo, walked across the grounds. He inspected the Iowa state facility, dived into the gates of the parking lot and admired the passionate support of fans for what was then a 1-4 team. He called his wife, Erica, after the game to share his impression.
“You are not going to believe this place,” Campbell told her. “This is a really special place.”
Given the history of the Cyclones up to that point – only 11 bowling games in 12 decades, no conference championships since 1912 – few would call the school a destination. But Campbell saw potential. When the job was opened, a year later, the idea of taking the Cyclones from the “college football mockery”, as he used to say, to a place of national relevance attracted him.
“There was a lot of rough road and a lot of rough waters that we had to start over, clean up and align with,” said Campbell. “The reality is that it hasn’t happened consistently here, ever.”
In just five years, Campbell made his vision a reality – and consistent. On Saturday, No. 10 Iowa State faces No. 25 Oregon at the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl (4 pm ET, ESPN and ESPN App), the first appearance of the New Year’s Six bowl game in school history.
This season has been filled with similar premieres. The Cyclones (8-3) reached the sixth position at one point in the College Football Playoff ranking, the highest they have been in any national ranking since their program started in the 1890s. They ended at the top of the regular season ranking of the Big 12 for the first time, and his eight conference wins are a historic record. A victory at the Fiesta Bowl would be the ninth victory of the season, a school record that had occurred only twice before: 1906 and 2000.
That impulse started with Campbell.
“When I was playing there, thinking about going to the Fiesta Bowl seemed so far-fetched and unreal,” said former Iowa state receiver Allen Lazard, now with the Green Bay Packers. “All credit goes to Coach Campbell and his team for what they did up and down.”
WHEN CAMPBELL ARRIVEDIowa State had won five games in the previous two seasons combined.
His predecessor, Paul Rhoads, took the state of Iowa to three cups in his first three years, and his teams developed a reputation for playing hard and scoring the occasional win of raising their eyebrows, nothing bigger than the 2011 turn of the then n . 2 State of Oklahoma, which destroyed the Cowboys’ BCS title hopes.
But the state of Iowa has been 8-28 in the past three seasons for Rhoads, and sports director Jamie Pollard has made a change. He defeated Campbell, 36 at the time and fresh from a 35-15 pass in Toledo.
The young coach was a football player. Her father, Rick, was a football coach at a longtime school in Ohio.
“Being close to the locker room, being close to an influential person impacting and strengthening young people’s lives and seeing it happen when I was a child, I think it had a profound impact on me,” said Campbell.
Campbell’s own coach, Keith Wakefield, was another strong influence, along with Larry Kehres, a coach who won 11 national titles at Mount Union and whom Campbell played at Division III school. Wakefield, said Campbell, “taught us not only the game of football, but also the game of life”. At Mount Union, Kehres’ program was “about relationships, trust and culture”.
This trio of mentors provided Campbell with a base to help launch his career.
“If I hadn’t had that experience at that point in my life, I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to become a football coach,” said Campbell.
In his foray into the Big 12, translating Campbell’s success with Toledo at the Mid-American Conference was a difficult challenge. In its first year, the team went 3-9. But Campbell’s expectations remained non-negotiable.
“When Coach Campbell and his team arrived, they immediately changed the culture from day one,” said Lazard. “They demanded new standards, new expectations and imposed a much higher level of responsibility on us than many of us – especially me – were usually not kept.”
Campbell emphasized the details. Punctuality. Technique. “Win on the margins”, as he calls it. Since the Cyclones were not supplied with five-star recruits, they would have to spend time perfecting the little things to have a chance.
“We don’t accept delays on this program,” said youthful tight end Charlie Kolar. “In this program, you arrive on time or do not practice that day, no matter who you are.
“It bleeds into practice, running the right route, blocking the right gap, making the right tackle.”
It can be frustrating at times, said Kolar, but something that seems meaningless during field training “is the difference between a seven-point win and a seven-point loss.”
Accumulating victories would take time, however.
“In the first year, we had to learn to believe,” said Campbell. “In year 2, we had to learn to win.”
CAMPBELL PROJECT COMING SOON received a boost from within. In the winter after Campbell’s first season in Iowa, running back David Montgomery established a Friday night routine.
Instead of going out and enjoying college life, Montgomery – now a running back for the Chicago Bears – started watching movies and training late at night on the team’s premises. Soon, the Bailey twins – the defensive tip JaQuan Bailey and the defensive tackle Joshua Bailey – joined him. After a few weeks, a small handful of players became two dozen.
The overtime and focus on details were worth it. In 2017, the Cyclones had 8-5, burst an 18-game losing streak for Oklahoma, peaked at 14th in the Associated Press poll and won the Liberty Bowl. Campbell and the Cyclones were turning heads, especially with the victory over the Sooners, who went to the College Football Playoff at the end of the season.
“Winning a game like the one we did against Oklahoma showed us and our kids that: ‘Here’s what it takes to succeed,'” Campbell said ahead of the 2018 season.
This discovery was only the beginning. In the past four seasons, the Cyclones have reached 31-19, making the current senior class – who were recruited in Campbell’s debut season 3-9 – the most successful in Iowa state history. These teams have won eight games three times and seven the other season. This will be the fourth consecutive bowling game, an achievement never before achieved in the program’s history.
Stability and flexibility have been the main factors.
Campbell brought more than a dozen Toledo employees with him to the state of Iowa, and many remain on the Cyclone team, including offensive coordinator Tom Manning and defensive coordinator Jon Heacock.
And he found reliability as a defender in three-year-old Brock Purdy. Since joining the roster with a win over West Virginia’s sixth team in their first career start in 2018, the junior has been steadfast in a position that had a significant rotation before his arrival.
Purdy has 22-11 as a starter, 19-7 against 12 major teams and 12-1 at home. The All-Big 12 quarterback of the first team was the first Cyclone to receive that honor since John Quinn in 1981. In the 33 games he started, the state of Iowa averaged 432 offensive yards and 32 points.
“We grew up as a show like Brock did,” said Campbell. “I feel like a lot of the lessons we’ve learned and a lot of the growth we’ve had, it’s been a lot of fun for all of us to be able to do this together.”
Campbell also built a strong racing game around Purdy. In the quarterback’s freshman campaign, he had Montgomery, the Big 12’s second biggest rusher in 2018, and had Breece Hall for the past two seasons. After a solid freshman campaign in 2019, Hall emerged as an underdog candidate for the Heisman Trophy this season and is second national in running yards (1,436) and running touchdowns (19).
The program’s stability is complemented by the flexibility that Campbell and his team demonstrated. Midway through the 2018 season, Heacock changed the defensive philosophy from a four-man front to three forwards to better accommodate the defensive squad’s talent. During this off-season, Campbell made changes in the strength and conditioning of the team and even adjusted details such as the way they structured the meetings.
Heacock’s defense was a strong point throughout the Iowa state campaign. The Cyclones were in the top three of the Big 12 in defense points in each of the past four years and gave up an average of less than 23 points per game in that period.
The team is also open to player feedback as the program evolves, increasing the list buy-in.
“A lot of that has just been a willingness to really listen and understand the contributions that players can make,” said safety Greg Eisworth. “Our coaching staff … has been very successful and has been doing this for a long time, so it can be difficult to change your philosophy or understand what the players are saying.
“But having the humility of just having these conversations, from coach to player or from player to coach, so that we can all be on the same page and go in the same direction … I think that really helped us tremendously.”
Despite the cyclones gaining more and the talent on the roster improving, Campbell hammered his message.
“Yes, maybe we have aged and our talent has been able to develop,” said Campbell, “but I think that in order to become the best version of ourselves, the best team we can become, the difference is in the details. The difference it’s in our ability to do the little things. “
HOW FAR IOWA State football is yet to be seen, but the trend is promising.
Campbell, whose name is speculatively released when important coaching jobs are opened, appears to be content. He signed a contract extension until 2025 after the last season, and during the most recent coach carousel, nothing indicated the intention to make a change.
Pollard acknowledged the likely interest during a recent interview on SiriusXM Big 12 Today – “I’m not naive enough to think that he will ever leave Iowa,” he said – but he is confident in the confidence the two have built and the quality of your relationship.
Campbell, who loved the challenge of building something when he arrived in Iowa, is up to it.
“At the moment, he has proven that you can succeed in Iowa,” said Pollard.
The level of achievement is unprecedented for the program. At one point this season, the Cyclones were close to the playoff. They were on the verge of a definitive conference championship, which they haven’t won in 108 years.
After a November victory over Texas, Campbell was asked if he imagined this success. Referring to his first year in Iowa, Campbell said he set no goals beyond one: “Can’t we be a laughing stock in college football?”
Under his supervision, the state of Iowa no longer had to worry about this.