Penn State Nittany Lions athletic director Pat Kraft was feeling the pressure after he fired James Franklin.
It’s not because firing Franklin was the wrong move. In fact, there were plenty of reasons to believe that the Nittany Lions had to move on from their longtime head coach. The biggest was that Franklin clearly could not win the big game, so Kraft couldn’t be blamed for wanting more for his program.
Where Kraft could be blamed was for how this coaching search played out. Penn State targeted several big-name coaches who turned the Nittany Lions down. It came to a point where it seemed like Kraft had no plan.
The end result was the hiring of Matt Campbell, who is a good head coach, but the process of getting there was clearly stressful for Kraft. Heck, just listen to his rant on the topic.
It’s over now, though, and Penn State’s AD is clearly breathing a sigh of relief now that the search is over. He’s so relieved, in fact, that he’s making jokes about this saga eventually becoming a Netflix documentary.
“I won’t go deep into the search,” Kraft said in the introductory news conference for Campbell. “Because, as you know, there’s a lot of things going on. We didn’t really have a timeline, and I mean that. We were focused on finding the right person, and at all costs. Probably be a Netflix documentary at some point. The way that Matt and I got to each other was through some twists and turns in the road, but we — I needed a partner that I had trust and belief in to take that role because it was so important. This department needs a leader for this role and this institution.”
Penn State Nittany Lions had some embarrassing moments en route to hiring Matt Campbell
After firing Franklin, did Kraft have a plan? It didn’t seem like it.
It seems like he believed the gravitas of the open Penn State job would make the Nittany Lions the most attractive option on the market for potential targets.
In the meantime, Penn State’s recruitment of coaches like Nebraska’s Matt Rhule, Indiana’s Curt Cignetti, Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz, Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea, Georgia Tech’s Brent Key and BYU’s Kalani Sitake all led to big swings and misses.
All of the aforementioned coaches also got millions of dollars in new deals from their schools, thanks to Penn State’s interest. We’re talking $300 million worth of extensions.
Ultimately, Kraft and the Nittany Lions met up with Campbell from Iowa State, and a deal was struck.
All is well that ends well for Penn State because, for all intents and purposes, Campbell is a great coach. He went 72-55 in 10 seasons at Iowa State and 35-15 in five seasons before that at Toledo.
He’s a good coach, and now he has a huge brand behind him. It should be a good fit.
How Penn State got there, though, was a disaster. That won’t stop Kraft from feeling confident.
“So, as things went around I would echo it was a late-night phone call for the two of us and I’ll give you this. I was banging my head against the wall,” Kraft said. “Like, why did it take so long for us to find each other? He was perfect. We connected on so many levels. You know, I woke my wife up, Betsy, and I said, ‘Oh, my God. He’s the guy.’ So, look, there is a lot of turns and I appreciate the media speculating and putting things out there every step of the way that was true or not true, but 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.”
