In January 2023, Iowa State extended an offer to an unranked linebacker from Downers Grove North High School in Illinois. It was Cael Brezina’s first big offer, coming six months before he received his initial three-star rating as a recruit.
“They believed in me,” Brezina said. “It wasn’t about how many stars I had or any of that stuff. It was just who I was, what I was about, and they believed in what I could be as a football player, and I think that was pretty powerful.”
While other offers eventually came, Brezina committed to the Cyclones, where he spent his first two college seasons. He described head coach Matt Campbell as his “biggest supporter” who “believed in me more than I believed in myself a lot of the time.”
Though he missed the 2023 season-opener with injury, Brezina debuted against Iowa as a true freshman and played meaningful minutes the rest of the year, totaling 22 tackles across seven starts and eight appearances. Last season, he contributed 27 tackles and a forced fumble, appearing in all 12 games and starting five of them, vindicating Iowa’s early scholarship offer.
That unwavering support made it an easy decision to follow Campbell to Penn State this offseason. Though a few other schools reached out while he was in the portal, Brezina only scheduled one official visit, to Happy Valley, before making his decision. So far, the biggest difference has been the size of the student body.
“The amount of people everywhere has been kind of crazy,” Brezina said. “Just walking around campus, it’s pretty wild. If you go get food downtown in the middle of a Saturday at noon, there’s people everywhere.”
Seeing the large student population and local community has built Brezina’s excitement for the Beaver Stadium environment on gamedays. He’s already experienced the atmosphere at Penn State wrestling meets, where he was surprised to be recognized by an older fan who struck up a conversation.
“We got to talking and it was pretty cool just being able to talk to a random fan, but they’re very welcoming and excited about what was happening in Penn State football and all that stuff,” Brezina said.
The junior has also been welcomed in by teammates, including veteran linebacker Tony Rojas, who made a pivotal decision to return to Penn State despite a strong reported interest from Miami.
“I think he’s been a guy that has been really welcoming and been able to kind of show us around,” Brezina said. “Obviously he doesn’t know any more about the defense than we do so we don’t get that part of it, but it’s been good to have somebody that’s played a lot here.”
This fall, Brezina will push for minutes in a linebacker room that — in addition to Rojas — includes Iowa State transfers Caleb Bacon and Kooper Ebel, who started last season with the Cyclones. Regardless of Brezina’s positioning on the depth chart, the Nittany Lions will almost certainly have better depth at the position than last season, a promising sign for a program that brands itself as LBU.
