Hlas: Campbell tries to lift Cyclones from football wilderness

CEDAR RAPIDS — The conventional wisdom that says you can't win in football at Iowa State isn't wisdom at all.

It's an understandable sentiment, though, given the Cyclones haven't done any real winning since they went 9-3 in 2000 and beat Pittsburgh in the Insight.com Bowl. There have been seven bowl trips since, but all were lower-level bowls and none capped a season better than 7-5.

The Cyclones were 8-28 over Paul Rhoads' last three seasons. The seasons with big upset wins that marked Rhoads' first four years were gone.

However, the situation is far from hopeless. The easy thing to do is point to former football graveyards that rose to life with the right coaches. Kansas State, Northwestern, Duke ... Iowa.

The reality is it's been four decades since ISU had that right coach who could recruit at a high level, prepare a team to win consistently, and game-coach with the best of them. If you have someone with those three skills backed by modern-day facilities that are more than sufficient, you should be in business.

Is new Cyclone coach Matt Campbell that difference-maker? That will take a few years to judge. The new-car smell has been seductive before to ISU football fans, but the rides got rougher as the years piled up.

'He is undefeated, I get it. He hasn't played a game yet,' said Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard, who made Campbell his third football hire. 'There will be adversity. There always is. But he has gotten off to a running start.'

The only scoreboard outside of those 12 games on the schedule is recruiting. With under two months to assemble their 2016 class, Campbell and his staff got Iowa State its highest recruiting-rankings since recruiting-rankings became things. They got commitments from players in 19 different states.

'Twenty-one of the 29 signees have played in state-championship games at some time,' Campbell said at the Cyclone Tailgate Tour stop at the Cedar Rapids Marriott Tuesday night. 'Twenty-eight of the 29 were captains. It's important to me to have guys who know how to win and be successful.'

Winning is all Campbell has known, from his Ohio high school days, to playing at and being an assistant coach for the NCAA Division III national kingpin at Mount Union, to helping Toledo go from a Mid-American Conference afterthought to a winner as an assistant and an offensive coordinator, to going 35-15 after getting elevated to head coach there.

'I think winning is culture, I really do,' Campbell said. 'Even in high school, I played for one of the winningest coaches in the state of Ohio. I thought he set a culture.'

'He's the first head football coach at Iowa State since Jim Walden who came to Iowa State as an existing head coach,' said Cyclones radio announcer John Walters. 'The day after he was hired at Iowa State, he had about eight guys in the room wearing Iowa State gear discussing how they were going to recruit.'

It's recruit or die in college football. Your guys don't all have to be big-time recruits, but you better have some. Campbell signed five 4-star guys.

At 36, Campbell is the youngest head coach of a Power 5 conference program.

'I think (Campbell) is very contemporary,' Pollard said. 'Their entire staff, I think, relates extremely well to this generation. They've made things exciting. They're all over social media. They approach recruiting with an energy and a focus I haven't seen from any coaches before in any sport.

'They are non-stop recruiting from sunup to sundown. His phone has been sewn to his ear on this entire Tailgate Tour.'

Iowa State athletics needs football to be vibrant again. A long line of people sought photos with Campbell here. They want to feel like Cyclone football is trending upward for the first time in a while, and their coach isn't tempering their enthusiasm.

'You cannot convince him he's not going to win,' Walters said. 'He and his staff are absolutely certain they're going to be successful.'