Penn State has passed the midway point of its spring football slate of 15 practices — Matt Campbell’s first as the Nittany Lions’ head coach.
What is he looking for, most of all, these days? Consistency. Then momentum.
The consistency that establishes The Campbell Way — which is off to the kind of great start internally and externally that not even Patrick Kraft, Ph.D., himself could have hoped for.
Consistency from the literally dozens of players who are new to Happy Valley. Consistency led by a large chunk of Campbell’s on- and off-the-field staff. And, ultimately, consistency and then momentum that carries into summer workouts and fall practice.
Campbell spent 10 springs and 127 games at Iowa State. So, he understands the seasons. He knows how a season starts has great roots in what is planted in the spring.
In 2024, Iowa State started its season 7-0. And in 2025, it started its season 5-0. The 2026 season at Penn State will be his 15th season as a college head coach; when he took over the head job at Toledo in 2012, he was all of 32 — and the youngest head coach in all of the FBS. Now, he’s a grizzled veteran who has learned his lessons.
Hard to believe, the Blue-White practice on April 25 will be almost the mid-point between Campbell’s hiring and the season opener. Penn State’s game against Marshall on Sept. 5 in Beaver Stadium is almost as close as the Dec. 8 day Campbell was introduced as Penn State’s 17th head football coach in front of a full house in the stadium’s media room. The end of the month will be the mid-point between Day One and Game One.
“SLOW, BUT RIGHT”
Campbell has coined the phrase “slow, but right” for everything he has done over the past four months — building a staff, a roster, a program, a culture, a playbook and a whole new set of relationships, while at the same time repairing a whole set of old relationships. Now, he’s stepped up the pace.
Wednesday, in the team meeting room on the ground floor of Lasch Building to a group of players who are the ground floor of a new era of Penn State football on a day that marked the midpoint of the spring season, Campbell had this question for his team:
“How can we individually and collectively recreate momentum for ourselves leaving spring practice?”
For Campbell and his staff and team, a big chunk is The Daily Grind. “Still, so much of this is about how we do things, right?” Campbell said when he met with the local media for 15 minutes on Thursday. “If you said, ‘What would be your ultimate goal?’ Well, the goal of spring practice is, How do we practice?
“It’s what it looks like is showing up every day with great consistency. We’re asking a lot of our guys in this five-week block of spring practice, we really are. From continuing to gain strength in the weight room to putting in two brand-new systems on the offensive and defensive side of the football. And also for some guys, involving coach Stig [Justin Lustig, a holdover from the Franklin regime] and special teams, there’s a lot of growth process.”
I tell my students at Penn State: Yes, 80% of life may be showing up. But studies show that if you do that in college, and come to every class, your basic grade will still only be a 62% — a low D. Not good enough for me, for them or for Matt Campbell.
“So just showing up isn’t good enough,” Campbell said on Thursday. “How you study every day, how you prepare, how you take care of your body — all those things have really been our emphasis. I think it’s the consistency of how we go about our process. You know, there’s obviously great room to grow, and we’re all going through change together.”
A LUSTIG APPROACH
Lustig takes note of that improvement everywhere, every day. Literally. Lustig, whose special teams last year at Penn State ranked high in most categories nationally, looks at it this way:
“I think when you talk about momentum, you look at, like we talked about installs, right?” Lustig told me on Thursday. “So, you’re installing defenses, but you’re also installing a way to practice.”
Specifically, Lustig says, it’s about “how physical the guys are, what you demand of them and in terms of how they act in meetings. If you can imagine the first meeting and the first practice, there’s going to be a lot of mistakes, right? ‘Why do you not have your notebook in this meeting? Let me see your notes. What do those notes look like?’”
Now, he can see the momentum starting to build.
“So, as you progress and you make those corrections, the momentum starts to roll, and you start to see the practices the way you want to see them,” Lustig said. “You start to see the meetings the way you want to see them. And that’s been getting better every week. It’s just a gradual climb. And if we can carry that all into June, when we get the guys back, and just increase that momentum, that’s what we’re looking to do.”
