The college football season is weeks from being over, and for most teams it’s already time to start preparing for 2025. But at a time when roster turnover is at an all-time high, Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell delivered one of the great quotes in recent college football memory after his Cyclones beat Miami 42-41 in the Pop-Tarts Bowl on Saturday.
In the post-game interview with ESPN, Campbell, whose team had just won on a final drive that went 85 yards in 15 plays and took 5:38, said, “Hard to find teams still in college football, but we’ve still got one in Ames, Iowa.”
I don’t view it as a shot at any coach or program. Everyone is just doing their best to build the best team possible in the era of no-strings-attached, annual free agency for ever player in the sport.
Related: Matt Campbell Calls This Question Ridiculous at Pop Tarts Bowl Press Conference
But Campbell was clearly signaling his commitment to continuing to build a program the so-called “old-fashioned” way, through high school recruiting, player development and, arguably most importantly, player retention.
Big 12 Transfer Portal Rankings
As it currently stands as of this column, Iowa State only has five transfer portal commitments. That’s tied for the fewest in the Big 12 with BYU and West Virginia.
By comparison, Texas Tech already has 19 transfer portal commitments.
Expect West Virginia to skyrocket well past that number once new head coach Rich Rodriguez gets recruiting. But it’s no surprise that BYU and Iowa State are going to like stay at, or near, the bottom of the Big 12 transfer portal standings.
And that’s exactly how Matt Campbell wants it.
Related: Big 12 Transfer Portal Winners and Losers After Week 2 of the Winter Window
There’s been a lot of coaches who have been knocked for seemingly not embracing the transfer portal, i.e. Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney. Whether that’s fair or not is part of a separate column. But for Campbell, he seems to know when he will need to use it, but it’s clearly not going to be his preferred method of building a program.
There’s no analytics around how players growing as a team through several years are better off playing together as a team compared to a compilation of highly-ranked recruits being thrown together for a one-off season.
We’ll likely see teams going forward who are able to win doing it the “old-school” and “new-school” way.
But if Matt Campbell keeps winning, and winning big at Iowa State, you know which way it’s going to be. He made as much clear on Saturday with Pop-Tarts glitter all over his polo.
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