Matt Campbell Once Agreed to Take the Detroit Lions Job

Matt Campbell in the NFL? After years of reports and rumors, apparently Campbell was closer than most ever realized. According to a new story from ESPN’s Jake Trotter, Matt Campbell initially agreed to become the next head coach of the Detroit Lions in 2021, but eventually changed his mind. The Lions ended up hiring Dan Campbell instead.

Campbell told Trotter in the column, which was about his adjustment from Iowa State to Penn State, “Leaving Ames wasn’t something that I was looking to do or wanting to do.”

While it’s a bit of a surprise to hear how close Campbell was to leaving the Cyclones for the NFL, the rumors and reports were always out there that teams from the Lions to the Jets and others were exploring the possibility of taking Campbell to the next level. But instead, he elected to take his coaching talents to State College, where as he noted in the article, he felt a similarity to Ames in the college town feel with a strong fan base and a commitment to college football.

Trotter noted that the first December week, after BYU coach Kalani Sitake declined the Nittany Lions’ offer, the search shifted to Matt Campbell.

Matt Campbell’s Departure

For Iowa State, maybe it was always just a matter of “when” and not “if” Campbell was going to leave. There’s no doubt he loved Ames, and his commitment was real, but as the world of college football continued to divide into the “haves” vs. the “have nots”, it was getting harder for Campbell to continue to do more with less. If he was serious about competing for National Championships, that was only getting more difficult at Iowa State. That’s not a knock on the Cyclones, but just a reality of the landscape of the sport right now.

And it’s further reason as to why the sport needs to change, hopefully for the better. We’re close to having teams with $40-$50 million payrolls playing teams with payrolls under $5 million. Even the Tampa Bay Rays are feeling bad for some of the underfunded programs.

My takeaway in reading through the piece is that while Campbell was likely to return to Ames had Sitake taken the job, it’s clear that Campbell was also likely to leave Ames eventually, given the landscape of the sport. That seemed all but inevitable.