A Diehard Penn State Fan's Take On The DISASTROUS Start To The Matt Campbell Era:

Mitchell Leff. Getty Images.

I didn't think it could get much worse than last year as a Penn State football fan. I mean, the 2025 season was a fucking nightmare. 

A team with national championship-level hype choked in the biggest game of the year against Oregon. They then followed it up with a loss on the road to winless UCLA. Then came the final nail in the coffin, as we saw another loss as 20+ point favorites the following week against Northwestern, which would be the game that ended James Franklin's time at Penn State forever. 

Now here we stand less than a year after, and a second embarrassing loss to Northwestern has hit the program. And it is far worse than the first. 

I've seen Penn State lose games. I've seen them lose far bigger heartbreakers. But in my 21 years of watching this team, I don't think I've ever seen them get dominated from start to finish the way they did last night. Just look at the stats. Northwestern ran for 415 YARDS ON US. That game was a flat out shit-pumping. And now Penn State is 3-2, with two horrific losses on their resume. You even have kingkrabbypatty chirping us on the timeline. 

Naturally, many people have gone into panic mode. And for anybody who thinks the sky is falling after that game last night, I can't blame them. But what I absolutely will not tolerate is this revisionist history that I keep seeing from people online. And it's the type of shit I deal with on Mostly Sports every day from those two trolls at the desk. 

"oH, pEnN sTaTe ShOuLd'Ve NeVeR fIrEd JaMeS fRaNkLiN"

I'm so tired of this shit. The same people who were clowning "Big Game James" on an annual basis whenever he would lose to Ohio State or Michigan or Oregon are now the ones online saying that he's the second coming of Bear Bryant. And saying that Penn State fans were idiots for wanting him out of town. Give me a fucking break. 

Listen, I was a James Franklin supporter. Unlike a very significant portion of our donors and lettermen, I liked him a lot. But he was here at Penn State for 12 seasons. Not three. Not five. TWELVE. In those 12 years, we witnessed him go 4-21 against Top 10 opponents. We saw him fall short in virtually every game of meaning. And last season, when he had his best chance at finally breaking through with the greatest roster he ever assembled, he went 3-3 and was eliminated from the Playoff in early October. 

Now, if your argument is that Penn State is Penn State, and we're a program that'll never break through anyway, tell that to our donors who coughed up the money to retain all those star players last year. Tell that to our AD Pat Kraft, who's said repeatedly that his goal is to win a national championship. Tell that to FRANKLIN HIMSELF, who stated back in 2018 that he was trying to get us to that "elite" level. 

Another seven seasons went by after he said that, and despite TONS of additional funding and resources given to him, Franklin failed to take that next step and turn us into an elite program. Donors, lettermen, and fans alike were pissed. We had plateaued. And then the bottom wound up falling out completely last season. 

Franklin's actually pretty lucky that we cut him off when we did. For the most part, he was able to save his image after those three bad losses. He didn't have to coach on the road against Iowa, he didn't have to go to Ohio State, and he didn't have to face Indiana later in the season. Lord knows how much more damage he would've taken had he finished out the year. The tires could've fallen off even more than they already did. I'm talking like a tractor-trailer's worth of tires here. 

Hell, let's just run with the hypothetical: What if James Franklin was still the head coach of Penn State football today? 

He probably finishes last season with a losing record. All of the senior talent from that squad last year (Drew Allar, Kaytron Allen, Nick Singleton, etc.) goes to the pros. You're left with an extremely young team for 2026 with guys who aren't developed enough to lead the program. This was always going to be a transition year, and that was before the dumpster fire of last season. And who knows? Maybe some of those young guys don't even stick around after the dumpster fire. Maybe they transfer out. The recruits were already dropping, I know that. MASSIVE commits like 5-star RB Kemon Spell started to explore other options again after we lost to UCLA. He was the gem of the 2027 recruiting class, but a lot of people don't know that the 2026 class before him was actually the worst class that Franklin had put together in recent memory. The freshmen coming into the program this year were going to be VERY underwhelming.

So there would be no buzz surrounding the team in 2026. There would be no faith in Franklin to lead the team. And there would be no hope for the future of the program. It's why Pat Kraft said when he fired Franklin that it wasn't about the three bad games last season. It was about the trajectory of where things were going. 

At least with a new head coach, some of that hope is restored. Of course, that hope might be gone today after seeing Campbell's start to the Big Ten slate, but let's not pretend that Matt Campbell wasn't viewed as an awesome hire by EVERYBODY back in December. He was universally-respected in the profession. Shit, he almost went to the NFL to be the head coach of the Lions at one point. So it wasn't just in the college game where he commanded that respect, either. 

He brought with him a Top 5 transfer portal class full of guys who were heavily sought after by other schools. Some of the Iowa State players like Rocco Becht, Ben Brahmer, and Marcus Neal were big-time targets in the portal. And while the team has clearly struggled to put things together early on, the roster is better on paper than what it would've been if Franklin was still the coach this year. Undoubtedly. 

I don't know how many players who followed Franklin to Virginia Tech would be starting over the guys we have at Penn State right now. But I can guarantee you it would be a small, small number…

That being said, while this current team is almost certainly better than the team that Franklin would've rolled out this season, it still pales in comparison to the talent we had in the program last year. Blue-chip ratio is a metric in college football that essentially shows you how many 4 and 5-star guys are on a roster. That's dumbing it down a lot, but you get the point. Anyway, this year's Penn State squad boasts a 31% blue-chip ratio. That number was all the way up at 65% for last year's team. Talk about a dropoff. 

So for everybody saying that Matt Campbell had to go to the Playoff this year or else his first season would be a bust, what the fuck are you talking about? T-Bob said that to me on air yesterday, and I was stunned that people actually believed that. Sure, you could look at the schedule and see that Penn State got a really favorable draw in the Big Ten. You could sketch out a path from that I guess. 

But look at the actual context of the team. Penn State barely made it to a bowl game last year with all that talent we had. Now you have a significantly worse roster going through all the change of a new coaching regime, and you seriously thought this team was gonna be a shoe-in for the Playoff? I'm a glass half-full kind of guy, and I love Penn State, but I wasn't even fucking saying that. 

I had no expectations for the team this year. A small part of me did hope that if Cignetti could turn a bunch of JMU and Indiana guys into a juggernaut so quick, then maybe we could do the same. But above all, I just wanted to see a brand and an identity come to form. I wanted to see what type of pitch Matt Campbell could sell to the college football world as to what he's building here at Penn State. And unfortunately, that pitch isn't a good one after these last two weeks. We're a laughingstock. That's the part I'm most upset about. 

All these things can be true at once, though: James Franklin was rightfully fired, Matt Campbell was a great hire, but the start of the Campbell era has been a disaster. I know people online really hate nuance, but those aren't mutually-exclusive things to say.

Maybe in some time, Campbell actually won't turn out to be a great hire. Maybe we'll look back on his tenure here as a total failure. I'm not ready to deem it that just two weeks into conference play, though. While I wasn't expecting the growing pains to be this horrid, I told myself I would be patient with this team. And I'm gonna continue to root like hell for Campbell and this program as they navigate these trying times. It's looking rough right now, but I really hope they can figure it out.

We Are.