Matt Campbell building Penn State's No. 1 transfer portal class with Iowa State players is a winning strategy

Penn State's rapid rise to No. 1 in the transfer portal rankings under new coach Matt Campbell is already a flashpoint discussion around college football. To Nittany Lions fans seeking hope after a tumultuous 2025, it's a sign of hope.

But detractors have their doubts over whether a team stocked with players who finished 8-4 at Iowa State in 2025 can flourish in the Big Ten.

It's a fair question, but it neglects this reality: the convoy of former Cyclones that Campbell is landing are largely the best from ISU, and they will only be the floor for the Nittany Lions in a new era. The players around them at Penn State will be more talented than the players who were around them at Iowa State.

Over the longterm, Penn State's ceiling under Campbell will be determined by how he fares in a new stratosphere of recruiting possibilities that didn't exist for him at Iowa State.

In the short term, Penn State's 2026 success will be determined by how Campbell blends three distinct factions within his own roster. 

First, there are the holdovers from the 2025 team who developed a strong loyalty to former interim coach and current cornerbacks coach Terry Smith. Then, there are the newcomers, a group that includes 12 true freshmen and a small but growing number of transfers from places other than Iowa State.

Finally, there is the list of former Iowa State players that is at 20 and counting who know Campbell and understand his style. 

With a predictable mass exodus transpiring at Penn State amid the transition from James Franklin to Campbell, the the roster restocking had to start somewhere. Why are people surprised that it started with the players Campbell knows best?

Among the players Campbell has landed from Iowa State so far are:

— a top-10 quarterback (Rocco Becht)
— a top-15 receiver (Chase Sowell)
— a top-15 running back (Carson Hansen)
— two top-15 tight ends (Benjamin Brahmer and Gabe Burkle)
— a top-5 linebacker (Caleb Bacon)
— a top-10 safety (Marcus Neal Jr.)

If those seven players were transferring to Penn State from Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, Miami and Texas, the narrative would be about how Campbell is already stockpiling talent.

He is, but it's not being universally acknowledged as such because they are coming from Iowa State. Perhaps the difference is here: a distinction can be drawn between good talent and good players.

Most of the players Campbell recruited to Iowa State weren't elite prospects regarded as overly talented or having the physical tools required to one day be drafted into the NFL. But that doesn't mean they aren't good players.

Becht brings three seasons of Power Four starting experience along with 64 passing touchdowns and 19 on the ground. He will also have several of his top targets (Sowell boasts 115 career receptions) and a running back in Hansen who has totaled 1,700 rushing yards and 19 touchdowns the past two seasons.

Defensively, Bacon and Neal combined for 20.5 tackles for loss in 2025. If those players aren't considered solid building blocks, then we're living in a land of delusion over what should be expected of a first-year coach. 

No program going through a coaching change -- no matter how robust its revenue-sharing and third-party NIL programs may be -- can afford to shop exclusively on the luxury aisle. When you've got 40 outbound transfers (and counting) and an insignificant high school recruiting class, you need bodies.

It's why Curt Cignetti brought so many players with him from James Madison to Indiana. Look how that turned out.

It's an added benefit for Campbell that he knows so many of these players. If the Nittany Lions hired a retread who spent 2025 out of coaching or an NFL guy, this situation could be dire. What sources of talent would they be pulling from? They would be in desperation mode, getting swindled by agents and overpaying for players they don't know (see: 2025 North Carolina).

A big-name coordinator hire from another Power Four program also wouldn't have been able to pull a transfer class of this caliber together so quickly.

It's even debatable whether landing an SEC coach like Missouri's Eli Drinkwitz or Alabama's Kalen DeBoer would have yielded the immediate transfer portal dividends that hiring Campbell has brought. Players would be less eager to leave an SEC program and perhaps not as unfailingly loyal to those coaches as the former Iowa State players are to Campbell.

So often over his decade leading ISU, Campbell did more with less. He took overlooked, three-star recruits simply yearning for a power conference opportunity and developed them into quality Big 12 players.

As a result, he engendered trust. Campbell believed in guys with a chip on their shoulder and gave them a chance to shine. It's no wonder so many are following him as they all step together into a version of college football's Promised Land.  

Though the Cyclones produced a respectable 15 NFL Draft picks over Campbell's tenure, they were often a team whose whole was greater than the sum of its parts. They outperformed their collective talent level to elevate the program into its greatest era, highlighted by an appearance in the 2024 Big 12 Championship Game.

Over the same period, Penn State produced 51 draft picks, including eight first-rounders, compared to just one for Iowa State. As was the case for Franklin when he arrived at Penn State from Vanderbilt, there's simply a greater level of talent available to Campbell now because of Penn State's resources, fan base, facilities, visibility, etc.

College football transfer portal: Alabama, Oklahoma among 10 teams that secured major early upgrades for 2026

Brad Crawford

It was a struggle for Iowa State to even crack the top 50 in the 247Sports high school recruiting rankings at Iowa State. That won't be a problem for him at Penn State.

Just take a look at the players who have announced they are staying at Penn State. It's a long list of former four-star players who Campbell would have never landed at Iowa State. Guys like stud offensive lineman Anthony Donkoh, veteran linebacker Tony Rojas and productive tight end Andrew Rappleyea will be back. So will veteran corners Audavion Collins and Zion Tracy and promising young corner Daryus Dixson (it turns out retaining Smith to be the cornerbacks coach was a smart move).

A long list of touted offensive line prospects with multiple years of eligibility remaining are also coming back, including former five-star offensive tackle Malachi Goodman, who will only be a redshirt freshman. Running back Quinton Martin Jr., a former four-star prospect who totaled 103 yards rushing in Penn State's bowl win over Clemson, is returning as well. 

Campbell may be bringing a chunk of the Ames, Iowa population with him to State College, Pennsylvania. But the the incoming convoy is joining are a more talented supporting cast than the one it left behind.

There is no more logical path to rebuilding a program.

Now it's up to Campbell to mold a group highlighted by numerous former Cyclones into one that can meet Nittany Lion expectations.