Penn State’s Matt Campbell Is Not Sleepless About Flying to Seattle

The Penn State football team will leave on Thursday for its game this Saturday at the University of Washington, bussing down to Harrisburg and then taking the 2,300-mile direct, non-stop cross-country flight to Seattle.

It’s not an easy trip, with the 12:30 p.m. Pacific local time kick-off (3:30 p.m. in the East) necessitating the Nittany Lions (4-4, 1-4 Big Ten) depart a day earlier than usual for a road contest, Penn State coach Matt Campbell said on Tuesday

“I think you try to take all the information and just make the best travel plans possible. The time of the game, all those kind of things, are situations we’ll have to navigate and handle,” said Campbell, whose squad faces a Washington team (5-3, 2-3) that is coming off of consecutive wins over Purdue and Nebraska.

“But I don’t think it’s a debilitating situation.”

You have to wonder if the Penn State football coach said that 105 years ago, which was the last time — and only time — the Nittany Lions have played at Washington. That would have been Dec. 3, 1921, when the coach was Hugo Bezdek, who guided the Pennsylvania State College football team to a 21-7 victory over Washington in the season finale.

Bezdek was all too familiar with the Pacific Northwest. Prior to his 12 years as Penn State’s head football coach and 18 years as its athletic director, Bezdek coached football, basketball and football in two separate stints at the University of Oregon decades before the Pac-8 was formed.

According to the “Penn State Football Encyclopedia,” an epic tome written by the late, great Lou Prato, the Penn State contingent left for the West Coast immediately after a Thanksgiving Day 0-0 tie with Pitt at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. They took “an 8:30 p.m. train after a rousing send-off by several hundred State students at Union Station,” Prato wrote.

“They arrived [in Seattle] on Monday morning and practiced in secret for most of the week, as Bezdek was determined to win this game because of his previous West Coast ties.”

Prato wrote: “The only difference between West Coast and Eastern football, Bezdek told Seattle Star columnist Leon Lassen upon the team’s arrival, is the competition. Bezdek said, ‘On the Coast, a team usually has one or two hard games. While in the East, every game is a tough one.’” 

Before a crowd of 35,000, Penn State end Stan McCollum caught 11 of All-American quarterback Glenn Killinger’s 12 completions, including one for a touchdown. The victory gave the Nittany Lions an 8-0-2 final record and it extended their unbeaten streak to 24 games (which lasted for 30 games, through the 1922 season).

Campbell, whose team’s trip looks less arduous given the 1921 back-story, is seeking to extend the Nittany Lions’ unbeaten streak to two.

CAMPBELL ON THE ROAD: Campbell is 40-38 in road games as a coach. Here is a look at Campbell’s record as a head coach in those games, including two Big 12 title games at a neutral site and a 2025 season-opening 24-21 victory by Iowa State over Kansas State in Ireland (bowl games not included):

By School
Toledo (2012-15) — 12-9
Iowa State (2016-25) — 27-27
Penn State (2026) — 1-2
Total — 40-38

By Air Miles
Longest Trip, global — 3,888 miles (W, Iowa State-Kansas State, 2025, @ Dublin, Ireland)
Longest Trip, U.S. — 1,630 miles (L, Toledo @ Arizona, 2012)
Trips over 900 air miles — 3-4

PRESS CONFERENCE TAKEAWAYS: Here are the highlights of what the Penn State head coach had to say in his first of two sessions with media on Tuesday, just days after the Nittany Lions’ first Big Ten Conference win the year, 31-17, over Purdue:

1. Status of wide receivers Chase Sowell (out vs. Purdue) and Koby Howard (out the past five games), who as a duo are averaging 19.4 yards per catch and 187.6 yards per game.

Campbell said: “Chase is certainly…the word ‘probable’ is what I would use. He’s in a really good spot. Koby is still probably in the word ‘questionable.’ We’ll have to see where he’s at — and again, it’s the same rhetoric that I guess I’ve said the last couple weeks, is that when he’s ready, we’re going to try to make sure he’s on the field. But we’re going to make sure he’s ready to go.”

2. Will QB2 Alex Manske play vs. Washington; he’s appeared only once in five Big Ten games, and that play was negated by a penalty.

Campbell said: “When the lights come on and you get the opportunity to play, what does it look like? Whether we get those opportunities to foster that, that’ll be great. That is not my intent. My intent is this team playing its best football down the stretch, and that continues to be our priority for our whole football team. But obviously, if those opportunities would ever exist, we’re going to do everything in our power to try to get Alex in the football game.”

3. Fourth-down success. PSU converted 3 of 3 fourth-down offensive plays vs. Purdue and is 12 of 15 (80%) for the season, ranking No. 4 in the nation and tops in the Big Ten.

Campbell said: “I do think we have [had success] and are really good. If you look at our last four years, we’ve been right at the top of the country in fourth-down conversions. …You’re just trying to make the best decisions at the time in those moments, but those are all situational in my opinion. You’re always trying to do what’s best. It’s my responsibility to try to get the flow and the rhythm of the game to give us a chance to win the football game, and that’s how I take those decisions.”

4. Fielding punts inside the 10-yard line: PR Zay Robinson has 19 punt returns for a 10.3-yard average, with a long of 38, in 2026. Campbell was asked by veteran reporter Neil Rudel about Robinson fair-catching a pair of Purdue punts at Penn State’s own 4- and 6-yard lines. Rudel: “Is that a reasonable way to live, of fair-catching balls inside the 10 on Big Ten play?”

Campbell said: “If you don’t want to start on the 1. I think you’ve got to figure out what you want to live with.”