The Holy Grail for former Indiana football player and current Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft is a national championship. Especially in football, not a surprise given Penn State’s roots — national titles in 1982 and ’86 — and Kraft’s history as a linebacker with the Hoosiers.
Kraft first laid down the gauntlet when he was announced as PSU’s AD, on May 1, 2022: “…we are committed to winning national championships, conference championships. We will continue the tradition of winning.”
Under the leadership of Kraft, now three-and-a-half years into his tenure, the Nittany Lions won two national titles in 2024-25 — in wrestling (of course) and women’s volleyball. Three other teams made the Final Four: football, men’s ice hockey and men’s lacrosse.
Last season’s riches just made Kraft hungrier. Over the summer and into the fall, Kraft told everyone who would listen — athletes, coaches, donors, the media — that he wanted more. He said so at a fall kickoff student-athlete gathering, in team locker rooms, in staff meetings. He wanted four titles this school year, to be exact. Not so coincidentally, that’s the Penn State record for most national titles in a single season. It came in 1979-80, when four women’s teams won nattys —in field hockey, fencing, gymnastics and lacrosse.
That was the backdrop exactly eight weeks ago, when Kraft met with the media in Beaver Stadium and said, essentially, that’s why he fired James Franklin. No natty. Again. With three losses, PSU was out of the CFP and out of the national championship hunt, and Franklin — who promised his team and personnel were his best ever — was out of a job.
Fast forward to Monday, just after high noon: Standing where he explained the Franklin firing, Kraft explained the hiring of Matt Campbell, whose teams for 10 years punched above their weight at Iowa State. Pat is about winning Nats. And he underscored it four times:
1. “Hard-nosed, humble, relentless, a developer of young men, and [Campbell is] built for championships.”
2. “I thank our trustees. Thank you for your support and commitment to building a championship football program.”
3. “Coach [Campbell] is here to unite this community, energize our locker room and restore our championship mindset.”
4. “We got the guy — we really got the guy and the guy who is going to lead us to a national championship and bring us back to the best program in the country.”
CAMPBELL: NO. 1 x 5
Campbell does have championship mettle. Five Mattys in all.
As he himself mentioned, Campbell has been a part of five national championship college teams. All at Mount Union College. All in Division III. All under the tutelage of Larry Kehres, the Mount Union head coach from 1986-2012, who won 11 national championships and had a career record of 332-34-3 (.929). Campbell was a three-year starter at defensive end, a two-time Ohio Athletic Conference Lineman of the Year and an All-American. He was part of three national championships as a player in 2000-2002, and returned to be Mount Union’s offensive coordinator in 2005-06. They won national titles both years as well.
On Monday, before a crowded media room that featured Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi, Board of Trustees leaders, media, boosters, Penn State athletics administrators and his family, Campbell himself used the word “championship” six times — four times in reference to Penn State, once when talking of Kehres’ influence and once about the time Campbell and current Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni, a former Campbell teammate, coached together at Mount Union. The four:
1. “From this day forward, we’re going to wake up every single day in this football program and build championship habits.”
2. “If you’re going to build a championship team, you better have a championship staff.”
3. “So to me, we’ve had championship expectations every step of the way. You’re talking to the guy that lost one game in four years of college and has won five national championships. I don’t care what level it is, it’s a fact.”
4. “I want young men that want to be here at Penn State and want to win championships at Penn State. It has to start there.”
PAYDIRT
When it comes to incentifying Campbell on the Road to No. 1, Kraft put Penn State’s money where his mouth is. In Campbell’s eight-year, $70.5 million contract released by Penn State on Monday, here’s what Campbell gets paid if Kraft cashes in on his national championship in football:
“Automatic one year extension for making the CFP Playoffs with a compensation increase of no less than an additional $500,000. Automatic two-year extension for winning National Championship with a compensation increase of no less than an additional $1,000,000.”
A TIMELINE?
Kraft is impatient. He’ll be the first one to tell you that. He is results-oriented and highly-motivated. National championship = the result he wants.
Knowing that, I wondered if Campbell knew how long he had to reach the promised land. And I had my chance. After the public presser on Monday, there was a Q&A session with Campbell, attended by a small group of veteran Penn State beat writers, held in a meeting room of the Nittany Lions’ locker room in Beaver Stadium. Knowing that Indiana’s Curt Cignetti turned the nation’s historically worst Power 4 football program into the No. 1 program in the nation in two short years, I wondered if another Hooser — Dr. Patrick Kraft — had given Campbell a timeline to success. National championship success.
So, I asked Campbell the following: “National championships. You mentioned it. Pat mentions it all the time. Curt Cignetti may have shifted the paradigm. How quick are the expectations to compete for a national championship?”
Campbell’s 301-word reply — which follows — is non-committal, mostly. I get it, as Campbell’s predecessor used to say. On Day One, in a roomful of reporters who he had never met before, Campbell was krafty enough to not make a promise that would last for the rest of his Penn State Life.
Here’s what Campbell said: “You’re not going to hear me…we know what the expectation is here at Penn State, it’s been laid for a long time. But you can’t have those expectations without the habits and the daily process that it takes to get there. And that’s what you’re going to hear me talk about. I know what the expectations are, and I want those expectations, and I have the same goals, and our kids are going to have the same goals.
“I think the reality is, until I can get in here and see what’s going on, where are we at? What are the real…to sit here and say, I’ve watched a bunch of video. To sit here and say, ‘Man, who’s staying, who’s going?’
“But that is the great joy of this…like, man, we are going to start. We started about 48 hours ago of trying to put this puzzle together. And the great thing is, every year, man, it all starts over again with every team in college football — it’s a year-in, year-out basis. Now it’s not, you know, ‘Boy, they got this great senior class they’ve been grooming for three [years].’ It’s, how do you put together the best team you possibly can every year?
“And we’ll see what challenges we’re under, and see what that looks like. But I know there’s a great foundation here [and] some great players. And we’re going to have to do a great job of making sure those young men stay here and then build the right group around them and still not flinch away from development and flinch away from recruiting high school football players — because sacrificing the future for one day or one season, I think we’re gonna have to be really smart. Work a really fine line, to be quite honest with you.”
Me, with a follow-up: “Has Pat shared a timeline with you?”
Campbell, amid some chuckles in the room and including a few from him as well: “No, he has not.”
Me, again: “Well, he’s shared it with everyone else.”
