PETE: Keeping Matt Campbell around Iowa state another decade was the first item on college football’s new and growing to-do list

By now, you know Matt Campbell and Iowa State have renewed vows -- with a contract extending their relationship another eight years. If the best football coach in school history makes it the entire term of the still-to-be finalized contract, he’ll be a Cyclone 17 seasons. And you thought he’d be four-and-done when he moved to Ames from Toledo after the 2015 season. Joke’s on you, national media alleged experts who also (in)correctly said the Big 12 was teetering on implosion.

Those of us who know Matt Campbell, know his devotion, his loyalty and his commitment to finish what he started. By the end of the contract, his four children will have started and finished school in the same community, something very important to the family.

He won’t have a portfolio full of former house photos, like some coaches do, but he’ll have the type of respect the Bill Snyders and Kirk Ferentz’ of the coaching world have earned for their faithfulness to one school – and one school only. And yes, that means something in this changing world of college athletics and especially football.

Signing through December 2032 means a potential to coach his sons, if he desires, and one is named Rocco. Just saying. Primarily, it should prove something to recruits. It’s job security. It’s stability in this very unstable world in which Matt Campbell works.

What’s inside the new contract, may reveal something about the new age of coaching contracts. He currently earns $4 million or so, which is around 10th among Big 12 coaches. Whether his annual salary hits $5 million – we won’t know officially until the contract is released.

I look for this contract to be creative – sort of like his last contract. Out with the annual automatic salary increases. In with win-based incentives. His 2021 performance-based contract, for example, included:

Seven regular-season wins: $250,000

Eight regular-season wins: $500,000

Nine regular-season wins: $750,000

Ten regular-season wins: $1 million

Eleven regular-season wins: $1.25 million

Twelve regular-season wins: $1.5 million

The 2021 contract included an additional $3 million over three years to boost salaries for Campbell's assistants.

I wouldn’t be shocked if the new contract also allows for a football program general manager, a position resembling what Stanford created for former Cardinals quarterback Andrew Luck. The job would focus on roster management and overseeing player branding opportunities, among other duties.

Coaches are burden with today’s year-round recruiting of not only current players, but also players from the transfer portal. Just when do they have time to coach, with all the other stuff going on? Campbell, repeatedly, has said he gets just as much enjoyment out of a good practice, than actually coaching games.

Will this stop Matt Campbell’s name from popping up on dart-throwing, click-bait lists of potential coaches at various schools – like most recently North Carolina, and in the maybe near future at Ohio State?

Hell no.

Does it automatically mean Campbell and Iowa State are locked in marriage through at least Dec. 31, 2032?

See above.

Does it take some of the stress off both Campbell and athletics director Jamie Pollard? You better believe it. Wednesday afternoon, Campbell could officially tell recruits that he’s under contract to be at Iowa State for almost another decade. 

Pollard, also on Wednesday, could move to something else on his lengthy list of administrative to-dos concerning revenue-sharing, the transfer portal, NIL and whatever else there is that’s always popping up in this new age of college athletics.

He moves on, with one of the sport’s best football coaches under contract and at his side for a while longer – a long while in this here-today, gone-tomorrow world of whatever we’re experiencing.