Highs and lows from first season at Iowa State motivate Matt Campbell for year two

AMES — When he wasn't tied up in meetings, recruiting or spending time with his family during the holiday season, Iowa State football coach Matt Campbell kept up with bowl game results.

Seven ISU opponents qualified for the postseason, with four getting wins. Those four teams — Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Baylor — beat the Cyclones by 10, 7, 5 and 3 points, respectively. Iowa State had fourth-quarter leads in two of them.

That burn and frustration, mixed with the positivity of winning two of the last three games of the season, is what drives Campbell this offseason. Year one was about establishing a foundation. Year two is about getting over the hump.

'I think that's the great challenge: how do you not make the same mistakes twice?' Campbell told The Gazette on Wednesday. 'Do you continue the growth that it actually takes to win those football games? It's great motivation going forward and for myself and our staff, and everybody's really excited about what's to come and where we're going.'

What Campbell did with his four Toledo teams is what he hopes to do at Iowa State — build for the long term. The Rockets won 9, 7, 9 and 10 games in Campbell's four-year run and went to three bowl games. But the way in which those squads were built wasn't overnight.

If you spend any amount of time talking football with Campbell, the phrase 'the process' is likely to come up early and often. His path to getting Iowa State back to the postseason for the first time since 2012 is rooted in the day-to-day work. You aren't going to do things correctly on gameday if they're not done correctly in practice first.

'You don't just get lucky and win football games,' Campbell said. 'I've never believed that and I still will never believe that. It's what you do and how you approach things that allows you and a program to win football games.

'It reaffirmed that this football season of what my beliefs really are and what I believe in when building a program and what it really looks like.'

That process was something he learned as a player at Perry High School in Massillon, Ohio. After spending a year at Pittsburgh, he found the same thing as a collegiate player at Mount Union. He's used it as the core foundation of his coaching life that has taken him from Mount Union to Bowling Green, Toledo and Iowa State.

While coaching Toledo, elements of that process became second nature to the coaches and players. One of the most challenging aspects of making the move to Iowa State was creating that culture from the ground up.

'You've almost got to flip back to the beginning of it as you're rebuilding that program and remembering, 'Oh yeah, that's what it was like when it wasn't that way,'' Campbell said. '(We need to take the necessary steps) to make sure we are getting better and that the needle is continuing to go up.'

There was a solid leadership foundation with captains in quarterback Joel Lanning, wide receiver Allen Lazard, safety Kamari Cotton-Moya and defensive end Mitchell Meyers. Then there were guys like quarterback Jacob Park and cornerbacks Jomal Wiltz and D'Andre Payne who emerged throughout the season.

But Iowa State was able to draw on the fountain of youth for production, too.

The Cyclones played half a dozen true freshmen and a number of redshirt freshmen, with running backs David Montgomery and Kene Nwangwu, wide receiver Deshaunte Jones and defensive end JaQuan Bailey playing the most prominent roles. What all of those guys had in common, Campbell said, was their willingness to go beyond just what coaches asked them to do on the field.

'I had come from Toledo where the older guys were teaching the younger guys how to do that,' Campbell said. 'Here there were some of these younger guys that came from programs that had elite success and had some of those discipline and details about them.

'That was really impressive to me because you don't see a lot of young guys have the ability to comprehend that.'

When the season ended, Campbell met with each member of the team. At the conclusion of those meetings, he knew the goals hadn't changed. What was different was everyone's understanding in how to accomplish them.

For a competitive guy like Campbell, the goals are high. If lofty goals aren't established, then the ability to attain them already is lost.

'I think the expectation from here on out is your goals as a program are to play in and win a bowl game, to beat your rivals and No. 3 is to compete and win a Big 12 championship,' Campbell said. 'Our guys are understanding (what it takes) and I think you see our team now starting to compete for those goals and what it takes to reach those goals and milestones in our own program.'

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