Iowa State’s Matt Campbell called ‘most overrated’ coach in Big 12 Conference

HL: Iowa State’s Matt Campbell called ‘most overrated’ coach in Big 12 Conference

Iowa State returns almost every starter off its 2023 and should be considered a dark horse to win the Big 12 Conference in 2024, even if not everyone is sold on the program’s leader.

Saturday Blitz’s Connor Muldowney ranked Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell as the No. 1 most overrated coach in the Big 12 ahead of the season, ahead of TCU’s Sonny Dykes at No. 3 and Colorado’s Deion Sanders at No. 2.

Campbell enters his ninth season at Iowa State with a 38-34 overall record — he spent five seasons as Toledo’s hed coach before coming to Ames. The Cyclones went 7-6 in 2023 and lost to Memphis in the Liberty Bowl.

Campbell’s best season at Iowa State was in 2020, when the Cyclones won the Big 12 title and finished No. 9 in the final AP Top 25 after winning the Fiesta Bowl.

From Saturday Blitz: “...Campbell came back down to earth with a 7-6 season in 2021 followed by a 4-8 campaign in 2022. In 2023, he bounced back to go 7-6, but he gets a lot of love as a top-three head coach in the conference despite having just three seasons with more than seven wins in eight years and just one since 2019.”

Iowa State opens the season on Aug. 31 at home against North Dakota.