Once UW Candidate, Matt Campbell Was Too Expensive for Montlake

Four years ago, Matt Campbell's name came up in the University of Washington football coaching search.

The Iowa State leader reportedly was a finalist in the canvassing to find a replacement for the banished Jimmy Lake, who was cut loose nine games into the 2021 season for shoving a player in a nationally televised game against Oregon -- and probably for not beating the Ducks that day, as well.

A lot of people thought Campbell was going to get the job after he led his Big 12 team out of the darkness of 100-plus years of mostly football failure.

Yet the Huskies passed on him and took a flier on a guy named Kalen DeBoer, who was just getting his career started at Fresno State and maybe was just a little cheaper at the time than Campbell, who was said to be looking for a huge pay day, according to informed sources.

DeBoer earned $3.1 million and $4.2 million in his two seasons running the show at the UW.

On Friday, Campbell became the next Penn State football coach and doubled his pay from $5 million annually at Iowa state to a reported $10 million per season spread out over a decade with the Nittany Lions, finally taking the big-money step he pressed for with the UW in late 2021.

This is a good get for Penn State: Matt Campbell led Iowa State to its only two Top 15 finishes in 130 years of football. He also went 4-6 vs Top 10 teams which was light years better than ISU's 8-98 record in those games before he got to Ames. https://t.co/rvtL8hNJn9
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) December 5, 2025

He'll head to State College reportedly as the alternate choice to BYU's Kalani Sitake, who very publicly was courted and turned down the opportunity.

Interestingly enough, Sitake was considered as a UW replacement candidate to replace Lake, too, when Campbell and DeBoer were in the running.

Yet Campbell shared in a ho-hum 7-6 season 2021, while Sitake dealt with a 7-5 record at BYU that was considered a step back and brought some immediate staff changes. So neither one of those guys was in an optimum position to land the Husky job.

The UW went for the safer hire in DeBoer, who was 9-3 at Fresno State that season before stepping down before the Bulldogs won their bowl game.

Campbell, who was born in the football coaching cradle of Massillon, Ohio, initially played his college football as a defensive lineman at the University of Pittsburgh, so he brings Pennsylvania appeal to the Penn State job.

He left following 10 seasons at Iowa State, after putting together an 8-4 team this fall, and he positioned the Cyclones for an eighth bowl appearance in his time spent there, and he was 72-55 overall.

How Campbell would have fared had he come to Montlake is unclear. And whether he would still be with the Huskies is a fair question, considering he might have done what DeBoer did, which was win big early on and use the UW as a stepping stone to join a perennial top 10 program.

Or maybe he would won and stayed put -- and then begun negotiating to leave the Huskies for Penn State.

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