On a cold, wintry December day, as I trekked up I-99 to State College for Matt Campbell’s introductory press conference, I found myself wondering what cliches he would use to sell himself to the Penn State fanbase.
It was a fair question considering the tumultuous year Penn State football had just endured.
The Nittany Lions rang in 2025 in Arizona by defeating Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl, only to suffer one of the most heartbreaking losses in program history against Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff semifinals at the Orange Bowl.
Then came a preseason No. 2 ranking and three straight wins to open the season.
Then Oregon.
That loss let some of the helium out of the balloon. The stunning defeat at UCLA accelerated the descent. Then came Northwestern, the night everything finally unraveled. Fans turned on James Franklin, creating an ugly scene and leaving athletic director Pat Kraft with little choice but to fire the longtime head coach.
The roller coaster continued with three hard-fought losses to Iowa, Ohio State and eventual national champion Indiana before interim head coach Terry Smith rallied the Nittany Lions to four straight wins.
Then came a coaching search that became its own roller coaster.
Penn State pursued Kalani Sitake and explored other possibilities, but nothing materialized. Eventually, Campbell re-emerged as the opportunity opened.
Penn State was reeling on multiple fronts, yet this was the job Campbell coveted.
That fascinated me.
Here was a coach who had turned down NFL interest and other coveted college opportunities to remain at Iowa State. What made Penn State different?
Why Penn State?
Campbell wasted little time providing part of the answer.
“To, man, spending so much of my childhood in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania. My great-grandfather who worked in the coal mines, my grandparents who worked in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania, and all you heard around these family discussions was Coach [Joe] Paterno and the toughness and the character of the Penn State football program.”
At the time, it was easy to dismiss the reference as part of the sales pitch: a new coach trying to establish that he was something more than the eventual solution to a coaching search that had gone awry.
Nine months later, it looks like something more.
Campbell has embraced Penn State and its history. He has welcomed lettermen back into the facility and made them part of the program they helped build. There is even a picture of Paterno in Campbell’s office.
When Campbell was asked Sept. 2 about the new Paterno Family Football Experience inside Beaver Stadium, his answer reinforced that philosophy.
“I think from my end of it, it means the world to me to understand our history, to understand our past,” Campbell said. “What makes Penn State so special is the history of this place. It’s who came before us, what they’ve done, to allow us to have a platform to play in front of this unbelievable crowd.”
That is where Campbell has tapped into one of Penn State’s greatest strengths: its past.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.He is also doing something Bill O’Brien understandably could not do in the immediate aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky scandal and something Franklin rarely seemed comfortable doing during his tenure.
Campbell is openly embracing Joe Paterno’s place in Penn State football history.
That matters.
Paterno helped build Penn State from an Eastern independent into a national power. The program became prominent enough that Penn State eventually represented an attractive expansion opportunity for the Big Ten.
His fingerprints remain all over the program Campbell inherited.
Look at Penn State’s schedules during the 1980s. Alabama. USC. Notre Dame. Nebraska. Texas. The Nittany Lions weren’t simply playing national programs; they were beating more than their fair share of them.
Franklin deserves considerable credit for what came afterward. He modernized Penn State football, helped rebuild the program following the sanctions and restored it to national relevance. Penn State became a legitimate championship contender again during his tenure.
But Franklin never seemed to fully tap into the emotional connection many Penn State fans and former players still have with the Paterno era.
Campbell appears willing to do that.
More significantly, Penn State as an institution appears increasingly willing to reconnect with the Paterno name.
The university opened the Paterno Family Football Experience inside Beaver Stadium, and Campbell invited Sue Paterno to speak to the team.
“I was a little nervous, I didn’t know what they wanted, but they were so welcoming and they were so polite, it was a marvelous experience,” Paterno told WPMT Fox 43.
Campbell being at the forefront of that reconnection matters because nobody is more publicly associated with Penn State football right now than its head coach.
Paterno’s legacy is complicated and will always be intertwined with difficult questions about the final chapter of his tenure. Acknowledging that complexity, however, does not require Penn State to erase the decades that preceded it or ignore Paterno’s role in building the football program and shaping the university’s national identity.
Campbell seems to understand that distinction.
He isn’t trying to recreate Paterno’s Penn State. He is trying to build his own.
But Campbell also recognizes something important about the place he now leads: Penn State football didn’t begin with him, and its history can be an asset rather than something kept at arm’s length.
For Campbell to maximize what Penn State can become, understanding what it has been matters.
And whether the conversation surrounding him is celebratory, complicated or uncomfortable, Joe Paterno will always be part of that history.
