Former Cyclone head coach Matt Campbell did the damn-near impossible: He turned Iowa State into a consistent winner. 

Since setting foot in Ames, Campbell went 72-55, good for a .567 winning percentage. He took the program to eight bowl games, including a five-year bowl streak from 2017 to 2021. He won eight games or more five times, and even propelled the Cyclones to 11 wins and a Big 12 Championship berth in 2024. More than that, he turned Ames into a place where future NFL talent could blossom, with 16 players selected in the NFL Draft during his tenure.

On the surface, it sounds straightforward enough. But once you dig a little deeper, it’s a tremendous feat. You see, before Campbell, Iowa State football was a lovable loser. Excluding Campbell’s time, the Cyclones are a sub .500 program (.462 winning percentage) and spent a lot of time in the basement of the old Big 8 and Big 12 Conference. 

To put it into perspective, the Cyclones are currently (even with Campbell’s excellent run) the seventh-losingest program in college football history, among the likes of Northwestern, Indiana, Rutgers, and Wake Forest. That means Campbell didn’t just take a struggling program and turn it into a flash-in-the-pan success story. Brick by brick, he built the Cyclones into a mainstay in the new-look Big 12, often on a shoestring budget.

By now, you likely know how the story goes. After an incredible run at Iowa State, Campbell has since left Ames to become the head coach at Penn State. Soon after Campbell’s departure, the Cyclones athletic department hired former Washington State and South Dakota State head coach Jimmy Rogers.

Iowa State now finds itself at a crossroads. The program finally learned how to win, and now they’ve lost the man who taught them. Rogers will not only be squaring off against a deep Big 12 league, but he’ll also be battling the “losing ghosts” that loomed over the program before his predecessor. It’s probably unfair to label the 2026 season as a referendum on Rogers or the direction of the program. Still, it should be fascinating to see what the program looks like without Campbell on the sidelines.

In case you missed it, Iowa State was arguably the biggest loser from the 2026 transfer portal cycle. Campbell didn’t just leave Ames, he took key pieces from his staff and roster with him.

Notable staff that migrated from Ames to Happy Valley are OC Taylor Mouser and OL coach Ryan Clanton. Twenty-three former Cyclone players and four high-profile recruits also followed Campbell eastward. Among the notables are starting quarterback Rocco Becht, wide receiver Chase Sowell, and standout tight end Ben Bramer, along with a whole swath of defenders and both offensive and defensive linemen. 

Penn State fans should be incredibly excited about the 2026 season. If they liked what they saw out of Iowa State last season, it should be more of the same this fall. But where does that leave Iowa State?

To combat the transfer exodus, Rogers and his staff had to hit the portal hard. The Cyclones took in 47 transfers, with many of them having played for Rogers at Wazzu or from the G6 ranks. We’ve seen plenty of programs take in big transfer portal classes, but the reviews have been mixed. 

Florida State notably lives and dies by the transfer portal, and has seen both sides of the coin. Before last season, Rich Rodriguez portaled in 53 players and went 4-8 in his homecoming in Morgantown. The 2026 Iowa State football team should be a fascinating experiment of what can go right or wrong in the portal-heavy era of college football. 

Speaking of big transfer portal classes…this won’t be Jimmy Rogers’ first rodeo. If Matt Campbell is building “Iowa State East” in Happy Valley, Rogers will be attempting to build “Wazzu Midwest” in Ames. 

Rogers took 15 former Washington State players with him to his new job. Notables include players like former Wazzu sack leader Isaac “Bobby” Terrell and cornerback Tyrone Cotton III. 

The biggest question (aside from replacing that many players) Rogers faces is centered around the quarterback position and who might replace Iowa State stalwart Rocco Becht. Rogers might’ve found his answer in former Arkansas State quarterback Jaylen Raynor. Last season, Raynor threw for over 3,300 yards and 19 touchdowns for a seven-win Red Wolves team. 

It would be disingenuous to suggest Raynor is a carbon-copy replacement for someone like Becht. Becht was the heart and soul of the last two Cyclones teams. He was an ultra-poised player who delivered countless times in big games. But Raynor might be a worthy contender for the QB1 this fall.

He’ll desperately need to improve his efficiency next season. And the Big 12 should be a solid step up in competition. But he had a solid 2025 campaign by Sun Belt standards, and might have enough enticing tools to work with in a league like the Big 12.

Aside from Raynor, it’s tough to nail down just how good this 2026 Iowa State team should be. Rogers, a former FCS national champion at South Dakota State, is clearly banking on the same model Campbell deployed, but rolling the dice that the Cyclones’ development program can get the most out of undervalued players from smaller schools. 

Campbell was a “development king” in Ames, routinely taking three-stars and making them play better than many thought possible. If Iowa State is to hit the ground running in 2026 or hopes to build off Campbell’s development plan, Rogers will need to do more of the same in the years to come.

The old saying “it’s not what you know, but who you know” just might apply to how Rogers got the Iowa State job in the first place. Within an hour of Campbell taking the Penn State job, Iowa State AD Scott Pollard announced that Rogers had been hired on a six-year deal.

Iowa State men’s basketball coach T.J. Otzelberger, formerly of South Dakota State, overlapped with Rogers during their time together in Brookings, South Dakota. 

Otzelberger remains a big advocate of Rogers and said as much to Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard. 

“T.J. Otzelberger said to me, ‘He’s Matt Campbell 2.0.’” Pollard remarked in an early December press conference. “He said, ‘He’s not going to mix a lot of words, he’s not going to smile a lot, but he’s going to be disciplined in everything he does all day long.’” 

In that endorsement lies the answer to what Iowa State is without Matt Campbell. The Cyclones aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel; instead, they’re trying to replicate what made them so successful over the last decade. By hiring “Campbell 2.0,” the administration is betting that the foundation in Ames is greater than the man who built it.

Whether Rogers can bottle what Campbell built and run with it remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Iowa State feels like they’ve shaken those “losing ghosts” and isn’t looking back anytime soon. The Cyclones have tasted success, and now they’re banking that a trusted recommendation can be the thing that keeps them from sliding back into the basement of the record books.

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In Part 1 of our big May Q&A, we dig into some of the biggest questions hanging over college football right now, starting with Brendan Sorsby’s uncertain status at Texas Tech and what it could mean for the Big 12 race. We also get into the new single-window transfer portal calendar, the changing value of internal player development, and how roster construction is evolving in a sport where continuity, money, scouting, and plain old luck all seem to matter at once.

From there, we zoom out to the SEC’s national championship drought, Texas’s non-conference schedule, the future structure of college football, and what a more stable version of the sport might look like by 2035. And naturally, we also find time for foot massagers, suspicious domain names, street-naming philosophies, and a little competitive geography talk.

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If you’ve listened to the pod, you know that we’re both suckers for a good nostalgia bomb. Got 5 minutes to kill before your next meeting? Allow me to present this awesome YouTube series taking a look at some of the goofiest moments in the goofiest sport.