Campbell, a three-time Big 12 Coach of the Year, had a 72-55 record during his run with the Cyclones. The fans in Happy Valley will demand even more wins from him now that he’s coaching the Nittany Lions.<\/p>\n
![\"Dec](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/e84a30add028c2df9f0ab3957fa50840.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Dec 8, 2025; University Park, PA, USA; Matt Campbell poses for a photo after being announced as the Penn State Nittany Lions new head coach during a press conference at the Beaver Stadium Press Room. Mandatory Credit: Matthew O’Haren-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Immediately after agreeing to an eight-year deal with Penn State, Campbell went out of his way to retain interim coach Terry Smith.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
“It was critically important for me to keep Terry, in my opinion,” Campbell said, via Penn State Nittany Lions on SI.<\/a> “Terry and I have had a great partnership from his days at Gateway. I know what he’s about and what he stands for. Building a staff is so critical because you need to build it around the same character values as who you are and what you want your team to stand for.”<\/p>\n Changes to the defense.<\/p>\n According to Pete Nakos of On3<\/a>, the Nittany Lions won’t retain defensive coordinator Jim Knowles.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Prior to joining Penn State’s staff in 2025, Knowles was the defensive coordinator for Oklahoma State (2018-2021) and Ohio State (2022-2024).<\/p>\n We’d have to imagine Knowles will find work elsewhere before the start of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n As for Campbell, he’ll now be tasked with replacing a well-respected defensive mind.<\/p>\n This story was originally published by The Spun<\/a> on Dec 10, 2025, where it first appeared in the College Football<\/a> section. Add The Spun as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It appears Matt Campbell is wasting no time shaking up Penn State’s football team. Penn State held an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,5774,82541,171742,168552,398,396,397,69005,8668,8392,5694,4933,99,136108],"class_list":["post-342621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-football-team","tag-iowa-state","tag-jim-knowles","tag-matt-campbell","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-nittany-lions","tag-onward-state","tag-penn-state","tag-penn-state-nittany-lions","tag-press-conference","tag-sports","tag-terry-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}