Everything Penn State AD Pat Kraft and coach Matt Campbell had to say during Monday's press conference

Monday was a big day for Penn State football with the introduction of new head coach Matt Campbell following a 54-day search that lasted longer than most expected. However, athletic director Pat Kraft finally got his many late last week, setting up Monday’s introductory press conference.

Nittany Lion fans can read everything both had to say during the question and answer portion of the press conference.

Q: Matt, welcome to Penn State. You’ve had other opportunities in the past to go to other places, including the NFL. Why now? Why Penn State and why now?

MATT CAMPBELL: You know, COVID hit in 2020 and I became a head football coach at 31 years old I was drinking out of a firehose to be honest with you. Until COVID hit and then you had this grace period. You usually don’t get that until they fire you.

You’re sitting at home that spring and I remember looking at my wife, we had four children at the time and I said, this is what’s going on at home? It was humbling, to be honest with you. I think we came out of COVID, and for us one of the things that really made me perspective, because I think I was the guy that, man, do I want to bounce around, do the next big thing? I said no, you better have some priorities in your life.

Number one, if you are ever going to leave or move it better be about your family. We’re two and a half hours away from home. To be able to have my father and my mother and my brother and my wife’s family be able to come be a part of this journey with me means a lot.

Number two, I always said you want to be around great people. You want to — if we’re going to lead we want to lead with the best. It was one conversation with Pat and one conversation with Neeli. I knew what their demand is and they want to be the best for the right reasons.

Then I think the last piece is what do you want to stand for? The hard thing for me ever wanting to leave Iowa State at times and getting close but saying, you know what, it’s just not the right time, is I never wanted to be that coach that was oh, man, I’m going to jump from job to job.

If we were to leave Iowa State I wanted to go somewhere and I wanted to finish my career and I wanted to stand for something that’s bigger than Matt Campbell. It’s not about me, but about the players and represents something bigger than myself and I found that.

I couldn’t be more humbled and grateful for that opportunity.

Q: This is for Pat. Could you take us through your timeline with this search and at what point did Matt become a candidate?

PAT KRAFT: Yeah, I think I won’t go deep into the end of the search because as you know there is a lot of things going on. We didn’t really have a timeline, and I mean that. We were focused on finding the right person, and at all costs.

Probably be a Netflix documentary at some point. The way that Matt and I got to each other was through some twists and turns in the road, but we — I needed a partner that I had trust and belief in to take that role because it was so important. This department needs a leader for this role and this institution.

So as things went around I would echo it was a late-night phone call for the two of us and I’ll give you this. I was banging my head against the wall, like, why did it take so long for us to find each other?

He was perfect. We connected on so many levels. You know, I woke my wife up, Betsy, and I said, Oh, my God, he’s the guy.

So look, there is a lot of turns and I appreciate the media speculating and putting things out there every step of the way that was true or not true, but we got the guy — we really got the guy and the guy who is going to lead us to a national championship and bring us back to the best program in the country.

Q: Matt, Pat mentioned the twists and turns. This became very public in a lot of over the last ten or so days. Was there any apprehension on your part when you saw the public nature of this when the time came to make a decision?

MATT CAMPBELL: The only apprehension that gives you is because you care so deeply about the young men at Iowa State. I love our kids. The only reason I’m sitting here today is because our kids believed in Matt Campbell and they stayed with Matt Campbell, and so I would be lying to say there wasn’t apprehension, because I love the young men that played for us and played for me at Iowa State.

As things got public I knew — Erica almost like slapped me in the head and said, what are you doing with any apprehension? This is meant to be. She was so right.

And honestly, President Neeli and Pat, their conversation you just said, you know what, we’re going to continue this journey and find out if it’s the right fit for us and it is the right fit for us.

Q: The Terry Smith part of this came together very quickly. Why was it important to get that part of it done? How receptive was he right off the bat, and will there be any other assistant coaches from either program already lined up?

PAT KRAFT: For us, Terry and myself were having conversations all along the way on the journey, and so it was very easy for me and we had discussed it too. They knew each other. Terry is Penn State. We made Terry the interim head coach because I felt he was the one person in this building to unify the team, and he’s shown that.

So the Terry decision was an absolute no-brainer, easy. That’s a testament to Terry. I think I’ve got best football coach in the country and I’ve got a partner for him who is Penn State who will fight for Penn State, lead his kids. I don’t know about you, but I feel really good about our chances moving forward.

That piece speaks to both Terry and Matt. They knew either other obviously in the past. Terry has been incredible through the whole process. For me that was a no-brainer and very easy for us.

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, I would just say it was critically important for me to keep Terry in my opinion. Terry and I have got 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.

Ironically I think Erica and I were watching the Penn State-Nebraska game and you watched, man, the intensity and the character and how this Penn State football team played. As soon as we got into discussions with this job it was one of the first questions that I asked, boy, I would really like to keep Terry; what do you think?

It was a resounding yes. The fact that Terry wants to stay and be a part of this, I couldn’t be more grateful, I really mean it, to work hand in hand with him. And knowing what it means to play here, knowing what it means to coach here, and knowing what it means to lead here, that’s huge for me.

As the rest of our staff, you know, we are going to spend the next couple days. I know there a lot reported out there; as usual, that’s not all true right now. We’re going to take our time, again, I think building — if you’re going to build a championship team you better have a championship staff.

I want to take my time and have a great opportunity to talk to everybody here in-house. I think that’s really important. And then have the opportunity from there to meet with our players. And then have the opportunity to start to fill out that staff.

Now, are there some people I know I want to bring from Iowa State? There certainly are, and we’ll do all those things at the right time.

Q: Question is for Pat. Pat, since you got here you’ve been very passionate and fiery. Talked about the search in October, who were looking for and why it mattered. Respectfully, I wanted to ask you, because I felt that passion and that fire last week when a video came out of you addressing the Penn State team. I felt that and I wanted to ask about that for a comment, but also why you felt it was important to talk to the team with the search ongoing?

PAT KRAFT: We’ll, I’ll talk to any of my athletes whenever they ask me to talk. I’m passionate and transparent with my athletes, kids and student-athletes. What I will tell but that is that I’m embarrassed. I apologize to anyone that I may have offended with that video that leaked. Personally it’s been challenging for me, but I am very passionate about Penn State. It was nine or ten football players that asked, wanted to sit down, and we had an open and honest discussion.

I fell short of the standard I should represent for all my staff that sits up there, all 833 athletes that I represent. You know, I can’t apologize enough for those who I may have offended. I’ve got to get better.

But every one of my athletes know they can call me at any point in time and I have open and honest discussions whenever they want.

So we’re moving on. We handled it in the family. I’m proud of our guys. I’m proud of them and excited for them to move forward.

Q: Welcome to State College. Curious if I could ask both of you on this, three you got about three weeks with this team still engaged on the field, getting ready for a game. How do you go about discussions that will give you a real sense of who is staying, who is going, who is committed to what comes next and who maybe wants to explore their other avenues when that January portal opens? How important is that for you the next few weeks getting a feel for all that?

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, I think it’s critically important. I think first and foremost, period, is to get to know the young men in this program. Trust, oh, buddy. If you want to win, if you want to have real success, trust has got to resonate from top to bottom in the program. It starts with the coach-player relationship.

I’m going to work with the staff tomorrow and try to get through every staff member tomorrow. For the next four to five days I want to meet individually with every player on our team. Why did you come to Penn State? Man, what’s going on here? Who are you and where are you going and what’s your thought process and how do we move ourselves forward?

When you do those things you start to understand how we move ourselves forward. To say, hey, we’re going to do to this way, that’s fool’s gold. We’ve got to get the information and ask the questions, and I really can’t wait to get to know the young men in our program and then we’ll move forward no matter what the situation is and have a great program moving forward when the time comes.

Q: Welcome to Happy Valley. I think about what you mentioned, 31 years old at Toledo; that’s one challenge. Then Iowa State is another challenge in building a program back to some success. You’re inheriting a pretty successful program here. I don’t know which ring Pat is wearing right now, but he loves to talk about the national championship caliber of all his programs. How do you embrace this challenge, because it is different, and why is this the right time to take on a national championship challenge?

MATT CAMPBELL: I’ve always said this: Our scars are our superpower. If you’re humble enough to grow through success and failure, then you continue to put yourself in position to be the best.

It’s when we stop growing that failure starts to seep in. So to me, we’ve had championship expectations every step of the way. You’re talking to the guy that lost one game in four years of college and as won five national championships. I don’t care what level it is, it’s a fact.

From my end of it is your scars have built you for those moments if you use them wisely. We’ve had unbelievable moments during our tenure as a football coach, had some great learning lessons along the way, and it’s always confidently prepared me to step into this role and to continue to build the greatest college football program in the country.

Q: I was hoping you could dive in a little bit to your philosophies on recruiting high school and portal, and as far as financially and geographically pertains to those things?

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, let’s start with the transfer portal to the high school piece of it. I think one of the great reasons being here is, boy, you’re in the most fertile ground of the excellence of high school football in a six- to eight-hour radius. Everything will start with building high school football and continuing to do a great job in this state and our surrounding states. Nobody is going to attack more than us.

Transfer portal obviously is — has become a unique advantage probably in some ways and sometimes can be a disadvantage. If you look at our history, the last couple of years, Jayden Higgins was maybe the 40th-ranked transfer portal guy, and Jayden Higgins was the No. 1 receiver taken in the draft last year.

You go to, man, in offensive tackle, Jalen Travis, who was drafted by the Colts, No. 40th in the transfer portal was the first transfer portal offensive tackle taken.

We have a process. We know what we’re looking for in the transfer portal and have to use that to continue to supplement our football team. Nobody will be better at developing our student-athletes and our high school football players better than us.

We’ve proven that every step of the way. I think you can ask Brock Purdy, Breece Hall, David Montgomery, Will McDonald. The flash, the stars, that’s cool on signing day, but winning football games on Saturday is what we’re going to be about.

That’s development. We’re going to have to be better than anybody in college football. You know, you asked a little bit tell me what — where am I missing the question? There was one other good part of that question.

The financial aspect, I think is certainly unique. One of the great things that we have here is the sacrifice that Pat and his team have made to, man, be competitive at the highest level to give yourself a chance to build the best team.

Now, I think sometimes in college football, we can get lost on the financial piece of it. Do I think it’s important? Absolutely. But I think the reality is that it cannot be priority No. 1.

I want young men that want to be here at Penn State and want to win championships at Penn State. It has to start there. Obviously, with Pat, what he’s done here to give us a chance to be able to compete with everybody in college football, I’m really grateful for that.

Q: Have some bowl practices coming up. How do you plan to handle that and what will you your role in that period?

MATT CAMPBELL: That’s a great question. I probably need to think about that next. It’s been a whirlwind in every way, shape, and form. We got practice today. The first thing I can do is not be a hindrance to this great team.

They have done — again, to watch these guys climb back, it’s been super impressive. My respect for Terry and the seniors on this football team, man, going to win four in a row, that’s huge.

And so I think we’ll figure out, Terry and I, where is the best place that I can not be a hindrance to this team. It allows me to be able to start to build for the ’26 team, and yet still be around, and, again, that relationship piece, really start to develop that relationship with our players.

So I’m going to have to honestly walk a really fine line, because that’s going to be a unique challenge. I do look forward to it.

That’s a great question. I don’t know if I have the perfect answer because I think I’m going to have to work through it day by day.

Q: Nick Sirianni said the other day you guys left Mount Union with a doctorate degree in coaching. How would you describe your relationship with Nick? Did he help at all during this decision-making process, and what did you guys collectively learned, as well as Jason Candle at Mount Union under Coach Larry?

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, you know, I would say that experience that we had as players and Nick and I were coaches together for a year at Mount Union. We won a championship together as coaches.

Nick was coaching the corners; I was the offensive coordinator and O-line coach, and Jason was the receiver coach. The doctorate came because we had the humility of a leader in Coach Kehres that demanded to teach us everything he knew, which is really hard to find.

His ability to give us opportunities to grow as coaches, make mistakes, and fail at times and yet get better was so rewarding. And I think all of us, any of us in coaching today, are so grateful. Coach Kehres doesn’t get the credit, but what that man has accomplished nobody has accomplished in the sport of football.

To be able to make everybody else around him better was humbling. For Nick and I, we’ve had this incredible relationship. You know, we’ve had it during our coaching career through some of our ups and downs Nick has been there for us, and hopefully Nick would say, man, through some of his ups and downs we’ve been there for him.

Uniquely, on Thursday morning I was — I got to like a million texts from Nick. Nick can be a little — like he’s like I always say like four years younger than his maturity. Like trying to be like pecking at me.

I’m finally, man, what do you want? Man, are you coming here? I said, well, should I come here? He was like, well, I don’t know anything about Penn State football. I’m like, okay. Well, shoot, you’re not helping me.

No, I think for me to have him regionally so close, we would fly out there and spend a bunch of time with Nick. I’ll say this story: I take a little credit to that Super Bowl team a year ago. We got out there and here is the credit I took: I watched Saquon and it was literally the first three practices. He had me out and he said, man, can you come out? Awesome. Come out.

First I’m on the practice field and see these two incredible tackles. They were the first two guys out. Then I saw Saquon Barkley. And this is a credit to Penn State, too.

How that guy practiced every day that I was there, man, I watched this guy. When it was special teams, he took his position coach and he went and did individual every day. We walked off that field and I said, hey, listen, buddy, you’re going to screw this up if you don’t go win the Super Bowl.

So man, put a lot of pressure on that guy. No, Nick has been an unbelievable friend. We have a great relationship. We grew up very similar. His father was a high school football coach, his brother a high school football coach, his other brother we know a great college football coach.

That family has been great to me and I really appreciate our friendship.

Q: Pat, when you got here, there was a football staff in place. Now with this reset and what you know on 2025, what do you want to do with the general manager role in this program? How do you think that should look, operate, find that person, and what’s the plan?

PAT KRAFT: Yeah, that’s actually a good joint question. Look, I think it’s critical in this new space. We’re getting closer and closer to the NFL. We’re not there yet. We’re recruiting young men, and that’s why this hire is so important. They have to have a leader and a mentor. These aren’t professional athletes; take the money aside.

The general manager aspect is critical and I think it’s an important factor to the success of a program moving forward. There is a lot more to deal with. Your player personnel, you’re scouting high school that we always had to scout. You’re scouting every single college team.

College team. Not Division I, not Power Four. DIII. IVs, DIIs. So we obviously had the conversation about how do we build that to make sure we’re getting the right talent and people on board.

So, yes, I think the GM is an important part. Then, as you start to build the personnel department out, it’s critical. And Matt can explain the GM piece.

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, I think Pat is so right. You got to remember, we’ve almost had to be in what I guess some of the blue blood programs kind of got away with because they had the resources do it. We had to do — we had to have a GM at Iowa State because we didn’t have those resources.

So we almost had to be better evaluators in high school, better evaluators in the transfer portal, because it was the only shot we could get. How could we be early on guys? We have an unbelievable GM, Derek Hoodjer, who was with us. I mean, we had to create our own collective, okay? We didn’t have Pat running or like — we had to do it all ourselves, and it’s almost one of the great things, probably advantages we had. We didn’t have an athletic director working with us. We had to build all those things from scratch.

I think it allows us to come and partner with Pat and Derek Hoodjer who was with me and really evolved into the GM role. I mean writing contracts. He created the contracts at Iowa State.

So the reality is we’re really lucky. Derek is one of the absolute bright minds in all of football, and is already here with us and started that. And now Derek’s role will be exactly what Pat said. We have to build out the greatest team underneath Derek that we possibly can. Not only a coaching staff, but certainly, man, player acquisition staff and retention staff that we can find.

We look forward to that journey.

Q. You mentioned going into the Lasch Building and getting goosebumps. Can you trace your roots with Penn State a little bit more? Had you been here? And also, how much interaction — did you know James and Bill O’Brien at conventions and had you ever met Joe?

MATT CAMPBELL: Yeah, so I’m going to say no to all because that’s honest. I’ve never been to Penn State. My greatest asset is what I talked about, Todd Blackledge, what his father has meant to me. Man, he’s been a huge advocate for me from the University of Toledo to Iowa State, and what Todd’s friendship has meant to me was huge.

Matt Millen, who was doing our games at Toledo, and I’m 31, 32 years old and didn’t have any idea and just the mentor that he became to me through my journey in football. To the absolute honesty of my grandparents are two of the greatest humans in my life. They had a profound impact on me.

My great grandparents and their history and work ethic and the pride they took in Penn State football and Coach Paterno. To the fact of the matter it is I know we’re at Linebacker U. I know might as well be in Running Back U. You can probably go down the line in almost every position group.

I know the history of this place and I really look forward to spending time with all the great people.

James, Coach O’Brien, I haven’t. Again, you’re not — I’m not the guy that came up probably like some of those guys. I came up in the DIII football world, and so I’m all right with that. But I know they’re great men and they did a great job here.