Matt Campbell spent a decade at Iowa State making something out of very little, and the latest roster spending numbers make that reality even starker now that he’s at Penn State.
According to The Athletic’s roster budget report, Iowa State would have the fourth-cheapest roster in the FBS this season under Jimmy Rogers, Campbell’s replacement in Ames, with spending estimated between $13 million and $17 million. Penn State, meanwhile, comes in at No. 22 nationally in the report and is spending around $30 million in 2026.
That puts Campbell in a familiar spot, just with bigger numbers attached. His budget may be much larger than it was at Iowa State, but in the Big Ten, he’s still operating in the lower half of the league’s spending hierarchy. Penn State is listed as the seventh-most expensive roster in the conference.
That matters because the gap at the top of the Big Ten is enormous. Ohio State and Oregon are spending nearly $50 million, if not more, this season. For athletic director Pat Kraft, closing that distance is the real challenge if Penn State wants to be a consistent Big Ten title contender.
The report also underscores why Campbell was such an appealing hire in the first place. Iowa State spent most of his tenure near the bottom of the FBS, which made his run in Ames even more impressive. He built around underrecruited players and turned that approach into a program that overachieved for years.
That’s also why the addition of general manager Derek Hoodjer mattered. In this era, winning at the top level is less about loading up on five-stars and more about squeezing the most value out of every dollar. Campbell has lived in that world for years.
At Penn State, though, the expectations are different. The school is already spending more than Iowa State ever did, and it should spend even more after Year 1 of the Campbell era.
James Franklin’s buyout didn’t end up being a major financial obstacle because of his offset clause, but staff changes still cost money, and so do major renovations on Beaver Stadium. None of that shows up in roster spending.
There’s also the fact that so much of the roster came over from Iowa State. That means many of those players can reasonably get raises and still represent good value compared with Big Ten competition.
That’s the bet here: what happens when the coach who did more with less gets more? Campbell has already proven he can work in a middle-class setup. The question is whether Penn State can keep pushing its spending closer to the league’s elite.
If Kraft can’t get the Nittany Lions much closer to Ohio State than they are to Iowa State, then the conversation around the program changes fast. Wisconsin and Nebraska, the two Big Ten teams closest to Penn State in 2026 roster spending, could start looking less like easy wins and more like direct competition.
The math is telling. Even after removing Texas Tech as an outlier in the Big 12, the gap from Iowa State at the bottom to TCU at the top is at most $12 million, using Iowa State’s low end and TCU’s high end. In the Big Ten, the difference between Penn State at No. 7 and Ohio State at No. 1 is at least $17 million, and as much as $26 million.
So yes, Campbell is getting more at Penn State. But compared with the conference’s heavyweights, he’s still being asked to stretch every dollar farther than the teams at the top.
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