Everything Matt Campbell said from the podium at Big Ten Media Days

New Penn State head coach Matt Campbell addressed reporters from the podium at Big Ten Media Days, previewing his Nittany Lions as they prepare for the 2026-27 season.

Here’s everything Campbell said, via ASAP Sports:

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MATT CAMPBELL: Thank you guys for having me. First and foremost, I want to start off and thank Commissioner Petitti, his leadership. I know I’m the young guy here and just coming into this, but how he’s been able to communicate and lead with us from the day we’ve gotten to Penn State, I couldn’t be more grateful for him.

For me, growing up in the footprint of the Big Ten, playing high school and college football in the footprint of the Big Ten, coaching, honestly, in my entire coaching career in the footprint of the Big Ten, and I think for me even the last two decades studying all the great teams and the great coaches in the Big Ten, it’s a great honor to be here.

I think it’s proven in the modern era of the Big Ten and in college football, this conference is the best in the country. I know it has prestigious academic institutions that go from coast to coast, storied football traditions that go down generations, and for me, I couldn’t be more humbled and grateful to be here representing Penn State, our university, our athletic department and our football program, the history, the legacy we represent. It’s deep. It’s deep with great coaches. It’s deep with great players and certainly deep with tremendous and great teams, some of the best that have ever played in college football.

It’s an honor to build on those great successes and traditions of our past. I will tell you we will honor the traditions of this great program, a program that’s played over 139 years of football, has almost 950 wins in college football. It’s my opportunity and my honor to be able to represent that great football program.

I think what we have found in our short time here in State College, number one, is an unbelievable community that’s wrapped their arms around myself and our family, our coaches and our family, and represent one of the proudest and most distinguished football fan bases in the country. It’s a fan base that loves football, but most importantly, how you build your football program. You build your football program with character, integrity, class and excellence, and I’ve really appreciated our fan base’s wisdom around those values.

I also want to say we found a great administration, an administration that is led by an incredible leader at the top in President Bendapudi, her humility and her excellence; by one of the most compassionate and athletic directors in the country in Pat Kraft, his passion, his energy I couldn’t be more grateful for.

Both of them working together, they love football, but again, what I appreciate about both of them is they want to see our football program built the right way. That’s why I really believed it was a perfect fit for us, because we bring the right way. It’s the primary reason why we took the job at Penn State, and I’m so grateful for this opportunity.

I’ve always believed that when you put the right culture and you put the right people, that’s what truly breeds success today in college football. You align them, you build them on the value of trust, and really over the last six months, what we have worked really hard to do is make sure we have the right people, the right people with the right values. We continually talk about these three great values, number one, great men of character, finding young men that stand for what’s right on the football field but equally off the football field and in our great community. Number two, young men that have a great passion for the game of football.

I think what’s fascinating in our world today is it continues to challenge 18- to 22-, 23-year-olds on their passion for the game of football. We have to find the right young men and the right families that they trust who we are and we’re allowed to develop those young men to become the best they possibly can be, and also finding young men and family who expect a meaningful education. It’s one of the great gifts of Penn State University, one of the proudest alumni bases in the country, is the opportunity to get a meaningful and impactful education.

As the values outside of the game of football continue to change, winning football games hasn’t wavered. How you win, how you win on the field, and quite honestly, what’s not going to waver is my belief system on how you build a football program and how you create a transformational journey in this journey.

I still believe it’s my responsibility to take young men to men, build great fathers, great husbands, great leaders. That’s still my responsibility and one that I look forward to. At Penn State, we choose a culture to do what is hard rather than what is easy, and we want people who want something more than just winning football games.

We’ve built a staff and a process here to reach its full potential, and I couldn’t be prouder of our coaching staff. I couldn’t be prouder of our performance team to build the process moving ourselves forward.

I think the last thing I’d like to do is talk about the three young men who we brought that are going to represent Penn State football. We’re proud that they come from a locker room that’s truly full of young men like them. These young men are part of 24 seniors who have led the way from day one since we came back in January of building the standard and expectation of moving our football program forward.

The first young man I’d like to talk about is Anthony Donkoh. Anthony is a fourth-year player in our Penn State program, a two-year starter, and Anthony was actually the first young man that decided to come back to Penn State when we got back to campus. Anthony is a young man whose work ethic and character has truly led us both on and off the football field.

The next young man I’d like to talk about is Rocco Beck. Rocco is a senior in college football. He spent the last four years at Iowa State. Rocco is the winningest quarterback coming back in college football this year, and Rocco is one of the young men whose grit, whose character, whose toughness has led the way during his college football career and he’s earned the right to be great every step of the way and in a short amount of time has been an unbelievable competitor and connector in our locker room.

Last but certainly not least is Tony Rojas. Tony also is in the fourth year in his time at Penn State, is also a two-year starter. Tony’s work ethic really battling back from a tough injury last year he — we lost him in the Oregon game a year ago, and Tony’s ability to battle back, his work ethic to battle back through hard, his ability to be talented and excellent on and off the field continues to be a guiding light in our football program.

It’s a small sample of a locker room of gentlemen just like them, a locker room of young men that stayed at Penn State and a locker room of young men that came to Penn State for a devoted cause.

We keep talking about this devoted cause of building one team, a team that has great standards and expectations for themselves, a team that understands the value that nothing is guaranteed. We’re not guaranteed in life our hopes and dreams but we are going to have to earn it every single day, and building a team that understands this is bigger than us.

We get an opportunity of a lifetime at one of the greatest football traditions to continue to build forward, and with a team of young men just like this, we get the opportunity to pursue success with honor every single day within our football program, and we look forward to the great challenges in front of us.

With that said, I’ll certainly open it to any questions you guys would have for me.

Q. Coach, you talk about obviously you’re building a culture there, having things align for your success. One person in particular in your defensive coordinator and D’Anton Lynn, what was it about him specifically that you felt he would be a great asset not only to your coaching staff but to the team itself, and what are you all looking to establish with one another as the season progresses?

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, great question. D’Anton, I think, on two or three fronts I’d really like to talk about. The first one is D’Anton has been in the Big Ten. He’s been a defensive coordinator over the last three years in this conference, the style of play, what it takes to play great defense. You saw his impact at both UCLA and USC and the improvement that those teams were able to make.

Number two, he’s a former player, and he understands what it means to play at Penn State. He understands what it means to lead at Penn State, and him and his family have a deep passion for the community and the success of the Penn State football program.

I think those two values, let alone D’Anton has already proven to be a great teacher, he has put a great staff around him, and he has already come in and had a profound impact on the young men in our program, but I would say those two values were really huge for me in that process.

Q. I wanted to ask about defense specifically because at your previous school you employed a 3-3-5, you’re going to a little different alignment now at Penn State. Was it the choice because of the league, was it because of your personnel? What made you decide to go ahead and change defenses that had been very successful at your previous stop?

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, I think a little bit is a multitude of thought process around that. When we were at the University of Toledo, we were a four-down front that had some multiple variations, and really in our first two years at Iowa State we started as a four-down front with some multiplicity before we got to what we evolved to at Iowa State over the last eight years.

I think if you really study how our league and the Big 12 evolved over the last couple years with multiple tight ends and really going from almost an air-raid system to more of a pro-style offense throughout the league, we felt like we had to evolve almost back to a four-down front at times or a 3-4 look.

I think it made it really easy for us to identify, okay, who are we, what do we want to make sure we have the ability to do. I still think the ability to have multiplicity in what we do defensively is certainly critical, but maybe coming from it with more of a four-down front.

But I still think those multiple variables are huge. We still have two coaches obviously in Tyson Veidt that was with us at Iowa State that has a great background in what we did there and Deon Broomfield who coached our secondary there.

I think you’ll see us continue to be multiple, but it’ll start from a four-down front.

Q. I wanted to talk to you about Terry Smith. How important was it for you to keep him on the staff, considering he led the team to four straight wins to end the season and be bowl eligible and his family and their history with the program?

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, I think it was extremely critical. I think before even truly accepting the job, and I give a lot of credit to Pat and our University of making that possible to be able to keep Terry. Again, I think for me, my background with Terry comes completely different. When I was at the University of Toledo, we were always trying to get a young man from Terry’s high school football program. You knew what he stood for. You knew what the young men that came out of his high school football program came from, and you fast forward almost 14 years later and the opportunity to watch him lead the football team at Penn State at the end of the year through a lot of adversity, and it wasn’t easy, and Terry did a great job settling the ship and giving us a great foundation to move forward from.

My gratitude and honor to be able to work forward with Terry and lead forward with Terry means a great deal to myself and certainly means a great deal to our young men and our football program.

Q. Coach, this off-season a story broke that you almost accepted the Detroit Lions job in 2021. What made it different now to accept the Penn State job and leave Iowa State this off-season?

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, you know, for me, I really loved my time in Ames, Iowa, and I’m really proud of what we were able to accomplish at Iowa State in our 10 years. Great players, great people, great community. If we were ever going to leave Iowa State, it was going to have to be a school and an institution that really fit how I believe and what I believe and how you build culture, how you build team and how you build forward.

I think for the last six months, we’ve been reminded why it was such a great fit for us at Penn State. I think the history, what it means to play there, but how you do it, the integrity, the character and the class in its finest moments, what Penn State football has really stood for, really resonated with myself and certainly my background. It really had to be a perfect fit, and that’s really why.