Is Matt Campbell Auditioning For A Potential Future At Notre Dame?

With the Camping World Bowl against Iowa State less than a week away, Notre Dame fans are still left speculating which offensive assistant coach will handle play-calling duties.

Will it be quarterbacks coach Tom Rees? What about the more experienced Lance Taylor? Or is head coach Brian Kelly keeping it a secret because he knows fans will riot as soon as they find out he has selected offensive line coach Jeff Quinn?

At the end of the day, the answer will be known shortly and the question of who will fill the role full time should be resolved within a month or so.

But fans and the media have already begun to wonder who will take over for Kelly once he decides his time in South Bend is complete. While this is not an immediate worry, the Fighting Irish head coach did provide a tentative expiration date in the spring when he spoke to Pete Thamel of Yahoo! Sports.

“I think if I’m fortunate enough to go five more years here, I would be very happy,” Kelly said.

One name often mentioned when discussing Kelly’s potential successor is Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell.

This talk was somewhat intensified during November when unnamed sources continued to include Kelly on a list of suitors for the then-vacant Florida State job.

With a 7-5 record this season, the Fighting Irish faithful don’t necessarily seem as enamored with the possibility of Campbell coming to Notre Dame as they did before, but it is impossible to deny that he has done a magical job of turning around the Cyclones, a perennial Big 12 bottom dweller for most this century.

The Cyclones won eight games in both 2017 and 2018, and seven so far this season, marking the first time since 2000-02 that they have posted a .500 or better record three years in a row.

While he has never produced an undefeated regular season, as Kelly did at Cincinnati, Campbell is going up against top-10 competition once or twice a season and playing other ranked and highly talented Big 12 teams.

He rarely loses to weaker opponents and does well in big games — both important factors when evaluating a possible Notre Dame head football coach. Despite playing high-scoring Big 12 offenses every week, the largest defeat for ISU in the last three years is a 14-point loss at No. 13 Texas in 2018.

During that same span of time, the Cyclones have also knocked off No. 3 Oklahoma (2017), No. 4 TCU (2017) and No. 6 West Virginia (2018).

While Iowa State didn’t beat any top-25 teams this season, they lost to currently ranked No. 16 Iowa, No. 7 Baylor and No. 4 Oklahoma by a combined four points.

Recruiting at Iowa State has also steadily improved since Campbell has been in Ames. The Cyclones currently have the nation’s No. 38 recruiting class, according to Rivals’ team rankings. If this position holds, it would be the team’s highest finish since 2002.

While the Notre Dame job likely won't be open for a few years, it is conceivable that Campbell will still be at Iowa State whenever it does become vacant. The Cyclones recently signed him to a major contract extension and it appears there are only a few jobs he would leave Ames for.

Is Notre Dame one of them?

“It’s logical. It’s conventional wisdom,” said Paul Clark, publisher at the Cyclone Report. “Iowa State, as a university, has done a good job of making its football job better. So the list of jobs out there that would be ‘worth leaving for’ has gotten shorter.

“If you’re looking at Matt Campbell from an Iowa State perspective and say, ‘What would be legitimate locations to worry about?’ I think it’s Midwest, elite programs, and Notre Dame is one of those.”

Clark said another possibility would be Ohio State, but first-year head coach Ryan Day just made the College Football Playoff and doesn’t appear to be leaving any time soon.

Of course, given the success Notre Dame has had in recent seasons, a coaching search would include names from all over the country, and it is starting to seem as if defensive coordinator Clark Lea will be a worthy successor.

Still, assuming Notre Dame and Kelly part ways on good terms, why wouldn’t the current Fighting Irish head coach have input on who takes over for him? And what better time to get to know Campbell as a man and a football coach than when you have a month to study and prepare for his team prior to a bowl game?

It is clear that Kelly already has a reverence for Iowa State and how they’re led.

“I think they’re well coached, first of all, a team that arguably could have been an 11-win team this year,” he said. “Defensively, very stingy there. Their 3-5-3 is a challenge in terms of what they do. You don’t see much of it relative to week to week. There were some nuances to that defensive structure that requires some time and some game planning.

“They play extremely hard on defense. So [they are] well coached, play hard and play for four quarters.”

But the question is, will Kelly still feel the same way after the two teams play at 12 p.m. ET Dec. 28?

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