Ad Disclosure
A Closer Look at Matt Campbell’s 14-26 Record Against Ranked Teams at Iowa State
Published:
WE ARE! Moving on from James Franklin at Penn State, who took most of his recruits into the Virginia Tech hinterlands of Blacksburg.
Replacing him is Iowa State’s Matt Campbell, who got an eight-year deal with $70 million guaranteed:
Campbell went 72-55 in nine seasons with the Cyclones, finishing twice inside the top 15 and twice going to the Big 12 title game. He was 50-40 in conference and transformed one of college football’s most mediocre programs into a perennial winner that sent guys like Breece Hall and David Montgomery to the NFL.
The one knock on Campbell is Franklinian. He can’t win the big game. He finished with a 14-26 record against ranked teams during nine seasons in Ames and therefore the narrative is that Penn State replaced James Franklin with James Franklin. Is it true? Let’s take a look.
2016
Campbell went 3-9 in his first season. He lost to #16 Iowa, #13 Baylor, #14 Oklahoma, and #18 WVU. Expectations were low and the results reflected that.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 0-4
2017
En route to an 8-5 season, the Cyclones beat #3 Oklahoma 38 to 31 in Norman. That was a road win over Baker Mayfield and Trey Sermon. They beat #4 TCU at home and lost to #15 Oklahoma State at home before beating #20 Memphis in the Liberty Bowl.
This was a good year but they did lose 3 of 4 down the stretch, two of which were against unranked teams. They used three different quarterbacks that season in Kyle Kempt, Jacob Park, and Zeb Noland.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 2-6
2018
Another 8-5 season in which they started 1-3 and handed the job to Brock Purdy.
They lost to #5 OU at home, #15 Texas on the road, and #13 Washington State in the Alamo Bowl. They beat #25 OK State on the road, and #6 WVU at home, winning 7 of 9 to finish the season.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 4-9
2019
Higher expectations but a 7-6 finish. They lost to #19 Iowa at home, #9 Oklahoma on the road (by a point), and #15 Notre Dame in the Camping World Bowl. They beat #19 Texas at home.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 5-12
2020
The best of the first five Campbell seasons, this was a 9-3 year with a trip to the Big 12 title game.
The Clones beat #18 Oklahoma, #17 Texas, and #25 Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl. They lost to #6 Oklahoma State by a field goal and dropped the second game to #10 OU for the conference championship.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 8-14
2021
A disappointing 7-6 season in which they lost to #10 Iowa, #13 Oklahoma, and #19 Clemson in the Cheez-it Bowl. They beat #8 Oklahoma State.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 9-17
2022
Just four wins for Iowa State in the year following Purdy’s departure. They lost to #17 Baylor, #20 Kansas State, #22 Texas, and #4 TCU.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 9-21
2023
Back to bowl eligibility with Rocco Becht under center, or in the shotgun. They beat #19 Kansas State but lost to #14 Oklahoma, #21 Kansas, and #7 Texas.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 10-24
2024
Campbell’s best season at ISU, finishing 11-3.
They beat #21 Iowa, #24 Kansas State, and #13 Miami in the Pop-Tarts Bowl. They lost to #15 Arizona State in the Big 12 title game.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 13-25
2025
He went 8-4 this past year, beating #17 Kansas State in Dublin while losing to #11 BYU.
cumulative record vs ranked teams: 14-26
Takeaways
For starters, four of those 26 losses took place in year #1, when Iowa State was still dreck and Campbell was trying to turn the program around. You can certainly put an asterisk on that 2016 if you’d like.
You could also point out that four more of the ranked losses took place during the 4-8 disappointment year when Hunter Dekkers bridged the gap between Brock Purdy and Rocco Becht.
Otherwise, it’s a lot of Oklahoma and some Texas on the list. Campbell finished 2-5 against OU and 2-3 against Texas during his time in Ames. Then, after the Sooners and Longhorns left for the SEC, Iowa State went 7-2 in the conference, knocked off ranked Iowa and ranked K State, but lost to ASU in the title game. So it’s an 0-2 mark in the Big 12 championship, once against Oklahoma and once after OU left the conference.
The disappointing thing about the 2020 title game is that OU ran out to a 17-0 lead and ISU had to mount a comeback just to make it a game. Purdy threw three interceptions and they missed a field goal. This, after they put up 37 on the Sooners in October of that year and entered the finale as the #6 team in the country.
And the Arizona State game wasn’t even close. The Sun Devils ran over ISU with 248 rushing yards and 219 passing yards en route to a 45-19 win. That was a matchup between #16 and #15 at the time, a couple of teams with the same record.
So you can certainly say that those two losses were big game disappointments. As good as ISU had been at times during Campbell’s tenure, he never won the Big 12 title, but on the flipside, Oklahoma won five titles in a row between 2015 and 2020. Not many people beat the Sooners,
Then you look at Campbell’s 3-4 bowl game record, which is just average on the surface without the tedious task of going through and identifying all of the various opt outs on either team. For what it’s worth, he was 2-2 with Purdy playing QB in those bowl games.
Certainly, there are some parallels to James Franklin at Penn State. You could say that Oklahoma was a bogeyman in the same way that Ohio State was always a problem for Franklin, but the gap between the programs is definitely not the same. Iowa State was not close to OU in terms of overall talent, resources, and history. They consistently ranked between #6 and #9 in Big 12 recruiting when OU and Texas were always #1 or #2. TCU, Oklahoma State, Baylor, and West Virginia consistently had top-5 recruiting classes within that conference. For sure, the talent gap between Franklin’s PSU teams and the Ohio States and Michigans of this world was not the same size at Iowa State and the Big 12 powers of years past. There were disappointments during Campbell’s tenure in Ames, but that program was nothing before he got there. He generally did more with less out there and reached the ceiling.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com