Personalized shoppers

‘Leader’s dilemma’

EQUAL PARTS HAPPY and relieved, Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft sat at the interview table inside the media room at Beaver Stadium with new coach Matt Campbell to his right.

After 58 days, Penn State had completed its coaching search with a selection who was both exciting and sensible, someone who seemingly could have been sitting with Kraft a lot sooner.

Campbell, only 46 years old, had become Iowa State’s all-time coaching wins leader and elevated the ISU program to historic consistency. Plus, he needed no introduction to Penn State and its tradition, having spent much of his childhood following Nittany Lions football while visiting his grandparents in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania.

Campbell’s hiring drew instant praise. But everyone wondered the same thing: What took so long?

“We didn’t really have a timeline, I mean that,” Kraft said. “We were focused on finding the right person, and at all costs.”

He paused.

“There probably will be a Netflix documentary at some point.”

Penn State’s was the first top-tier coaching job to open during a cycle that included 15 Power 4 hirings, but, until the Sherrone Moore scandal broke at Michigan, it was the very last to be filled. The search lasted so long that James Franklin, the coach Penn State abruptly fired after 12-plus seasons and 104 wins, found his next job at Virginia Tech three full weeks before Campbell was introduced in State College.

The 58-day saga included tens of millions in contract extension money for potential external candidates, a recruiting class that in large part followed Franklin to Blacksburg, the leaking of a secret audio recording of Kraft airing grievances, and the CEO of Crumbl cookies taking an interest.

ESPN spoke with sources in and around the Penn State search to assess what happened behind the scenes and why two sides seemingly meant for one another took so long to come together.

PENN STATE’S DECISION to fire Franklin on Oct. 12 rattled the college football world. Only 277 days earlier, Franklin had coached Penn State in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Orange Bowl, which the Nittany Lions led midway through the fourth quarter before falling 27-24 to Notre Dame.

Quarterback Drew Allar and many of Penn State’s top players had returned. The team made significant investments in the roster and the coaching staff, where Franklin plucked defensive coordinator Jim Knowles from national champion Ohio State. Penn State debuted at No. 2 in the AP Top 25, its highest preseason ranking in 28 years. But the team looked sluggish in nonconference play against non-Power 4 opponents Nevada, Florida International and Villanova.

After a heartbreaking overtime loss to Oregon at home, losses to winless UCLA and unranked Northwestern followed.

“Things really progressed poorly this year,” a source familiar with the search said. “Didn’t feel like they were going to get better within this year, and then didn’t feel great about the future.”

Franklin went 4-21 at Penn State against AP top-10 opponents, including 1-18 against Big Ten teams in the top 10. At a news conference on the day after firing Franklin, Kraft made it clear that Penn State needed to start winning the biggest games more often, including the ones that would secure the school’s first national championship since 1986.

“Football is our backbone,” Kraft said. “We have invested at the highest level. With that comes high expectations. Ultimately, I believe a new leader can help us win a national championship, and now is the right time for this change.”

In a meeting between Kraft and a group of Penn State team leaders after the firing, the contents of which later leaked in the final days of the search, the fourth-year athletic director acknowledged the stakes he was staring down.

“If I don’t get this right, my career is over,” Kraft said. “Understand that: If I don’t hire the right person, my career is over. So it’s very serious to me. This isn’t, like, what people just think. You all are going to graduate and move on. If I don’t find the right person, in two years, they will fire my ass and I don’t get another AD job.

“‘How could you f— up Penn State?'” he added rhetorically.

Kraft entered a market that wasn’t overflowing with obtainable candidates. Although Penn State was the first top-tier program to fire its coach, Florida fired Billy Napier the following week and LSU capped off the month by dumping Brian Kelly. This created competition among the blue bloods for top coaches.

“They figured, ‘Hey, we’ll get a good one, even though the market sucks and everybody else is in,'” an industry source said. “I don’t think they anticipated Missouri, Vandy, Indiana, Nebraska, SMU — everybody ponied up to keep their coaches, and that they couldn’t get one of these guys. It was always going to be a bad market to hire a football coach this year.

“There’s just not that many out there that are movable, and there’s too many open jobs.”

Penn State led its own search but contracted a firm to help handle elements such as candidate communication and background checks.

The initial speculation around Penn State centered on two coaches: Nebraska’s Matt Rhule and Indiana’s Curt Cignetti. Rhule played at Penn State and grew up in State College. He and Kraft were close from their time together at Temple, where Kraft served as deputy athletic director and then AD during Rhule’s tenure as Owls head coach. Cignetti had no direct connection to Penn State but was born in Pittsburgh, later worked at Temple and Pitt, and secured his first head coaching job at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Barely 96 hours after Penn State fired Franklin, Cignetti and Indiana agreed to a new eight-year contract that would pay him $11.6 million annually. His would be the first of several new and enhanced contracts secured by coaches connected to the Penn State search.

Rhule’s deal arrived at the end of October, and by then Penn State’s focus had already shifted. Although Rhule was evaluated by Penn State, sources connected to Penn State said his candidacy became amplified more in the media than in reality.

Penn State entered the search intending to take some big swings, while recognizing that the chances of landing certain coaches weren’t high. Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman and Texas A&M’s Mike Elko all surfaced as potential candidates.

Of the three, Elko seemed like the most realistic. He grew up in New Jersey and played college ball at Penn, before beginning his coaching career in the Northeast.

“The whole time, we thought Elko was going to be the guy,” an SEC coach said. “Then he came off the board.”

Elko kept winning at Texas A&M, a program that, despite no CFP appearances or recent league titles, had the financial clout to ensure it wouldn’t lose a coach over money. By late October, Texas A&M was 8-0 and Elko seemed all but set for an enhanced contract to remain with the Aggies, which he received Nov. 15.

In early December, DeBoer denied having any interest or contact with Penn State about its vacancy.

Penn State “never spent a ton of time on those guys knowing their current situations,” a source with knowledge of the search said.

The school wanted head coaches whose success couldn’t be tied to one quarterback or a single stretch of success. Penn State prioritized those who had shown a sustained ability to recruit and develop talent.

The lengthy search sparked weeks of speculation, as the public focus drifted from DeBoer to Elko to Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea to Louisville’s Jeff Brohm and even to James Madison’s Bob Chesney, the Pennsylvania native in his very first FBS job.

The truth, according to sources familiar with the search, is that two coaches appeared high on Penn State’s wish list from early on: BYU’s Kalani Sitake and Campbell, the Iowa State coach. But initially, Penn State pursued only one.

AT FIRST BLUSH, Sitake and Campbell seem like an odd pairing as contenders for the same A-list job.

Sitake is from Tonga and played fullback at BYU. Other than the 2015 season at Oregon State, he had spent his entire coaching career in the state of Utah at three different programs.

Campbell also had deep roots in a single state, Ohio, where he grew up, finished college at Division III power Mount Union and spent the decade-plus of his coaching career, culminating with his first head coaching opportunity at Toledo. But he also had family in Pennsylvania and had spent most of his life in the same region as Penn State.

Both coaches had led major programs for a decade, and had proved an ability to win across multiple quarterbacks and recruiting classes. Both oversaw balanced teams, built around the line of scrimmage, and were known for outstanding player development. BYU and Iowa State typically don’t sign nationally celebrated recruiting classes, but the teams have combined for 23 NFL draft picks since 2021.

Sitake is one of the most popular coaches in the sport, and Penn State loved his character-driven approach. Although Sitake had no connection to Happy Valley, Penn State felt he could adapt and compile a staff featuring some trusted BYU aides and others with more links to the PSU program and region.

By the end of October and into November, Sitake became Penn State’s focus, while he continued to lead a BYU team in contention for the Big 12 title and a CFP berth. Penn State had conversations with candidates such as Georgia Tech coach Brent Key and Pat Fitzgerald, the longtime Northwestern coach looking to return to the sideline. The school also interviewed interim coach Terry Smith, an assistant throughout Franklin’s tenure and a former PSU player under Joe Paterno.

Smith quickly gained support from current and former players, especially as the team improved under his watch with three straight wins to end the regular season. He was a legitimate candidate, sources close to the search said, and went through the same process as others, but ultimately lacked the FBS head coaching experience Penn State desired.

By late November, the school was locked in on Sitake, whose name had, to that point, not been widely connected to the Penn State job. University president Neeli Bendapudi had involvement in the effort to bring Sitake to Penn State, sources familiar with the search said.

Campbell, meanwhile, had not gained much traction. Despite Penn State’s initial interest, the school had received “some intel that was not accurate” about the ISU coach, a source familiar with the search said. Essentially, Campbell was portrayed as a coach who would struggle with the magnitude of the Penn State job, especially the recruiting and roster-construction elements when targeting higher-profile players who would demand serious money.

An industry insider “basically bad-mouthed Matt, told Pat that he didn’t work the portal well,” said a source familiar with the search. “It dampened Pat’s interest. He got a bad read about Matt from that [person]. That’s why I think he steered in a different direction.”

As the regular season concluded, Sitake was seemingly in line to become the next Nittany Lions coach. The hope was that his name wouldn’t get out publicly, and an agreement could be consummated after the Big 12 championship game.

But Sitake’s name began to leak during the final weekend of the regular season. By Dec. 1, a Monday, reports labeled Sitake as the focus of Penn State’s drawn-out search. BYU’s financial machine, which had activated to obtain top basketball recruit AJ Dybantsa and others, quickly kicked into gear to keep Sitake at his alma mater.

Several prominent BYU donors stepped up, including Jason McGowan, CEO and co-founder of Crumbl, the national cookie bakery chain, who lives in Provo, Utah, near BYU’s stadium. McGowan posted on X, “Some people are not replaceable. Sounds like it is time for me to get off the sidelines and get to work.”

Within 24 hours, BYU announced a new, enhanced long-term contract for Sitake, designed to keep him in Provo for good and compete regularly for the CFP. Penn State seemingly was back to square one.

In an attempt to rub sugar in the wound, a BYU fan sent Kraft a box of Crumbl cookies through DoorDash, while Virginia Tech just happened to serve Crumbl cookies at its first signing day event under Franklin.

JACKSON FORD SIGNED his letter of intent around lunchtime Dec. 3. Then reality set in.

A four-star defensive end at Malvern Prep, a private school 25 miles west of Philadelphia, Ford grew up watching the Nittany Lions. When he sprouted into a Power 4 recruit, Penn State was among the earliest programs to offer. “Dream school — I always wanted to play there,” Ford said.

He committed to the Nittany Lions in June. And while Franklin’s October dismissal came as a surprise, Ford never wavered on his pledge to the program this fall. But, as Ford walked out of his signing ceremony inside the Malvern Prep gymnasium, a flurry of news washed over him.

For at least a few minutes, Ford was officially the last man standing in Penn State’s 2026 class.

“It was kind of nerve-racking,” he told ESPN. “Like, ‘Dang, it’s really just me.'”

As the coaching search dragged on in the weeks before the 2026 early signing period, a once-promising Nittany Lions recruiting class crumbled almost entirely.

Penn State held pledges from 25 recruits within the nation’s 17th-ranked recruiting class in the 2026 cycle at the time of Franklin’s Oct. 12 firing. Among that group were six members of the 2026 ESPN 300, including coveted in-state recruits Kevin Brown (No. 78 overall), Messiah Mickens (No. 141) and Matt Sieg (No. 162). Four-star quarterback Troy Huhn, a polished, pro-style passer from San Marcos, California, had been committed for more than a year.

By the end of the early signing period on Dec. 5, only Ford remained with the Nittany Lions.

Florida and LSU each retained and signed the majority of their 2026 commits earlier this month despite the respective October firings of coaches Billy Napier and Brian Kelly. At Penn State, where sources familiar with the program described a hushed, old-school approach to financials and a recruiting operation centered firmly on Franklin himself, the infrastructure, or a lack thereof, caved in.

In the immediate aftermath, multiple former Penn State commits told ESPN that members of the Penn State staff said their previously agreed revenue share contracts were “null and void,” at least until the Nittany Lions hired a new coach. Others stopped hearing from the program altogether.

“Once Franklin got fired, they stopped contacting us completely,” the parent of another Penn State decommit said. “It’s like they didn’t have a recruiting department once he stepped away.”

The Penn State job had been vacant for more than a month when Franklin landed at Virginia Tech on Nov. 17 and immediately began targeting his former Penn State commits. “I’m pretty sure he called all of us that night,” eventual Hokies signee Benjamin Eziuka said.

Over the next two weeks, Franklin landed pledges from 11 ex-Nittany Lions commits, including Huhn, Mickens and eight others who had been part of the program’s incoming class on Oct. 12.

Brown and Sieg — two of Pennsylvania’s top five prospects in 2026 — landed together at West Virginia. North Carolina poached four former Penn State pledges. All told, 24 members of the Nittany Lions’ incoming class found new homes across 11 schools during the 58 days between Franklin’s firing and Campbell’s hiring.

But, in the background of the program’s recruiting collapse, interim coach Terry Smith and quarterbacks coach Trace McSorley spent the first 48 hours of December working on a signing day surprise.

The pair of Nittany Lions assistants had kept in touch with four-star quarterback Peyton Falzone after he flipped his pledge from Penn State to Auburn in the summer. When Falzone left the Tigers’ 2026 class on Dec. 1 following the arrival of former South Florida coach Alex Golesh at Auburn, the Nittany Lions were prepared to pounce. Smith sealed his commitment over the phone on the eve of the early signing period. Falzone put pen to paper in a signing ceremony the next day.

Afterward, one of his first phone calls was to Ford. Penn State’s lonely pair of early signing period additions will room together when Falzone and Ford land on campus in January.

“We’re fired up to get up there early and just work our tails off,” Ford said. “We have a lot to prove.”

“WHY ISN’T PENN State calling us?”

This was a popular question among Iowa State staffers close to Campbell in November. As they watched coach after coach re-up with their current school, they were baffled that Kraft had still expressed zero interest in the three-time Big 12 Coach of the Year.

That angst never reached Campbell, whose standard operating procedure was to have zero discussion about other jobs until the end of the regular season.

He’d turned down plenty of big-time opportunities over his decade in Ames, often needing only one phone call with an athletic director to sniff out which jobs were bad fits. Given his Midwest roots as a native of Massillon, Ohio, Penn State was always on the short list alongside Ohio State, Notre Dame and Michigan as jobs that staffers believed he privately coveted if the opportunity ever arose.

“I think honestly this was always one of the four schools that he would really, really, really want to go to,” a source close to Campbell said. “It didn’t matter how he got to it — he was going to get to it.”

Extracting him from Iowa State still wasn’t going to be easy. For Campbell, there was an extremely high bar to clear if he was going to put his family, staff and players through one of these transitions. Campbell has said he has already made more money than he ever dreamed of in coaching.

“The hard thing for me ever wanting to leave Iowa State at times — and getting close but saying, you know what, it’s just not the right time — is I never wanted to be that coach that was going to jump from job to job,” Campbell said.

Winning him over required pitching strong alignment with university leadership and a shared vision. He loved what he’d constructed in Ames, a successful and sustainable program that did things the right way with player-led teams and staff continuity, winning with modest roster budgets and an internal culture strong enough to withstand the NIL era and achieve the most successful period in Iowa State history.

Iowa State is not an easy place to win — because of the donor base and a historical lack of success — and isn’t getting easier. Campbell often described the job as going up the rough side of the mountain. Yet the more college football has evolved, the more entrenched he became about staying where he is and, as he likes to say, “standing for something.”

He was offered the Detroit Lions job in January 2021, and sources close to him believed he planned to accept. Campbell slept on it and declined the next day.

He’d promised Cyclones quarterback Brock Purdy he’d be there all four years of his college career. So he stuck by his word. Everything ended up working out fine for the Lions. Dan Campbell joked at his introductory news conference that he’d told his agent, “Make sure they think I’m Matt Campbell.”

Since then, it has been tough to line up perfect timing with perfect destination. And it seemed like 2025 might not be the year, either. Soon after the big jobs started opening, the Cyclones endured a four-game losing streak that knocked them out of the Big 12 title race. They managed to rally back in November and pull off an 8-4 finish.

The morning after Sitake re-upped with BYU, an associate with ties to both Kraft and Campbell reached out to the Penn State AD and brought up Campbell. Kraft was pitched on why Campbell could succeed at PSU: a proven culture, a detailed and disciplined approach and natural regional ties.

“If I were you,” the associate told Kraft, “I would turn my attention to Campbell quickly.”

Kraft agreed and asked to connect with Campbell. The associate thought Penn State would be an ideal spot for the Campbells with their extended family less than three hours away in Ohio. Kraft also suspected what their response might be to Penn State belatedly reaching out.

“What the f— took you guys so long?”

Penn State had an explanation, of course — that it was told Campbell could struggle with certain elements of the Penn State job — but Kraft would need to relay it himself. Late that night, the AD spoke with Campbell over the phone, and came away convinced that Penn State finally had its guy.

“I was banging my head against the wall like, ‘Why did it take so long for us to find each other?'” Kraft said. “He was perfect, and we connected on so many levels. I woke my wife, Betsy, up and said, ‘Oh my god, he’s the guy.'”

Kraft needed to meet Campbell in person and cleared out his remaining schedule for the following day. Campbell had a full slate of end-of-season meetings scheduled with Iowa State players and wasn’t going to think about the job until he completed those. Kraft and others involved in Penn State’s search flew to Ames on Thursday night, Dec. 4, for their own in-person meeting with their new No. 1 target. The Penn State contingent arrived at Campbell’s home with a term sheet in hand, determined to get a deal done. Campbell was joined by several top aides, including general manager Derek Hoodjer and chief of staff Skip Brabenec, sources said.

Iowa State staffers were left in suspense for most of Friday and were nervous that, just like with the Detroit job, this could still somehow fall through. They received radio silence from Campbell while his representative negotiated an eight-year, $70.5 million deal. Finally, Campbell called a 6:30 p.m. staff meeting.

Campbell held a team meeting a half hour later and ended up talking with Iowa State players until 2 a.m. He describes that night as “one of the hardest moments of my life.” Team leaders assured their head coach they understood and supported his decision.

Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard was prepared for his coach’s expected departure and immediately hired Washington State coach Jimmy Rogers that same night as Campbell’s replacement. Pollard went with Rogers over promoting longtime Campbell protégé Taylor Mouser, which made for a cleaner split for both sides and the end of an era.

After a fast and furious 48-hour pursuit to close out the marathon search, Penn State had found its next head coach.

“We got the guy we want,” Kraft said. “We really got the guy, the guy who’s going to lead us to a national championship and bring us back to the best program in the country.”

South Carolina star edge rusher Dylan Stewart announced his return to the Gamecocks for his true junior season in 2026.

The All-SEC linebacker is expected to be among the country’s highest-paid players after signing his deal with South Carolina, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

Stewart has 56 tackles, 11 sacks and 6 forced fumbles in 24 career games with South Carolina. He was the No. 24 overall prospect in the 2024 class out of Washington, D.C., according to the ESPN 300.

The Stewart news follows Monday’s announcement that quarterback LaNorris Sellers will also be returning.

The Gamecocks finished 4-8 (1-7) last season.