Penn State coach Matt Campbell likes his linebackers room, except for one thing.
Michael Mauti played his last college football game in 2012, and Campbell jokingly told reporters at Friday’s local media day that he tried to see if Mauti had any eligibility left.
“This new rule, you know, that came out,” Campbell said, referring to the “five-for-five” legislation,“I thought maybe we could get him for one more year.”
Campbell knew this wouldn’t be possible, but also knew that he wanted Mauti to be part of his staff.
So, on the net-to-last day of July, Penn State hired Mauti as its Director of Football Engagement.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.“Mike has been awesome,” Campbell said. “Obviously, he’s been working on campus. So I got to meet him early on during our time here and just was honestly just struck by his passion for what Penn State as a university and Penn State as a football program is about. And that was even before, man, we got down the rabbit hole of the 2012 team.”
The 2012 team is why Mauti will always be a Penn State hero.
Rocked by scandal and sanctions, Mauti could have been part of a mass exodus that led to Penn State football becoming irrelevant.
Instead, he stayed and became one of the faces of a program that pulled through, went 8-4 and, eventually, built itself back up to the point where it won a Big Ten Championship in 2016.
A documentary about this team, titled “Saving the Roar,” began streaming in April, and Campbell had the team watch it before they left for home in May after the spring semester ended.
Campbell credited athletic director Pat Kraft for allowing the staff to, well, craft Mauti’s role.
“To have Mike with us every day means a great deal, even just to pick his brain as a football player,” Campbell said. “To have him around our players, especially me, I think when our players watch that film and understand what him and Jordan Hill, what those guys stood for. I think it was a monumental growth moment for our football team to really understand what it means to play here, and to have those guys around us every day means a whole lot.”
Hill, another linebacker from that team, is Penn State’s Director of Player Development.
