'Everyone is completely bought in': How Matt Campb...

playMatt Campbell humbled to be Penn State's new coach (0:38)An emotional Matt Campbell addresses the media for the first time as Penn State's head coach. (0:38) STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- Matt Campbell sits back on a sofa inside the head coach's office that overlooks Penn State's practice fields. Four months into the job, the room still looks like he arrived that morning. A half-dozen white Nittany Lions helmets sit stacked on a multitiered shelf behind him. In front of him, a faded Rose Bowl trophy rests on the coffee table, its shine long gone. A lone photo of Beaver Stadium hangs on the wall near his desk. Otherwise, the spacious second-floor office in the Lasch football building remains bare. "Decorating the office is last on the list," Campbell says. "But we'll get there." Penn State's first-year coach has had other priorities. In December, one of his first moves was to invite every player from last season's roster into his office for one-on-one meetings. "When I played here, you never came up to the second floor unless you were in trouble," said new Penn State defensive coordinator D'Anton Lynn, who started 37 games at cornerback for the Nittany Lions from 2009-11. "I can't tell you what my defensive coordinator's office looked like. "Now there's players up here all the time." Penn State hired Campbell in part to win the big games that had slipped away under James Franklin. During Franklin's tenure, the Nittany Lions went 1-18 against top-10 Big Ten opponents. To reverse that trend, Campbell has been reshaping how Penn State operates, from the inside out. Opening his office door was just the start. Campbell has since met with each player individually at least twice more -- after finalizing his coaching staff and again before the team broke for spring break. He has even given players the keypad code that once kept the office locked and off limits. Campbell plans to knock down a wall, shrinking his own office, so the adjoining conference room can hold more people. It's part of his push to bring everyone who works with players -- from strength coaches to academic advisers -- into the same room at once. Other walls have been coming down, too. Players -- both returning Nittany Lions and the 25 Iowa State transfers who followed Campbell from Ames -- say a new chemistry in the locker room is already taking shape. "Coach Campbell and his staff have done a phenomenal job of getting us all to gel together," said junior guard Cooper Cousins, who earned a starting role for the Nittany Lions late last season. "We've had tight groups here. "But this is the closest one I've seen." ESPNWHEN PENN STATE reconvened for winter workouts at the beginning of the second semester, the players learned there'd be a draft. Campbell and his staff wanted to build camaraderie, create player-to-player accountability and eliminate any potential divide between returners and new arrivals. So he brought over a tradition that he had used in Ames. Two upperclassmen -- a returning Penn State player and an Iowa State transfer -- drafted eight teams of 12-14 players, plus an assistant coach. "The idea of it was scarier than when we actually got them in front of each other," said new offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser, who came with Campbell from Iowa State. "The Penn State guys would be worried we'd play favorites, and the Iowa State guys would be worried they wouldn't get to play because they're going up against Penn State guys." Competition began immediately, with a weekly winner and loser -- and real stakes. Teams earned points by sitting in the first two rows of class and lost points for showing up late. They've been rewarded for community service, like packing lunches for kids or visiting elementary school students. At the entrance to the Lasch building hangs a poster from a local class thanking players for reading to them. Each week's scorecard culminates with a Friday challenge. Over the winter, that ranged from which team burned the most calories on the assault bike to which team could drag a sled loaded with weight room plates the length of the football field the fastest. During spring practice, the Friday challenges shifted to a softball home run derby on baseball's Opening Day, an egg toss before Easter weekend and, preceding the Masters, a chipping contest. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Penn State Football (@pennstatefball) Weekly winners receive Penn State swag and applause from the rest of the team. The losers -- the assistant coach included -- report at 5:45 a.m. on their off day to restock fridges, clean silverware and mop the weight room floor. "My shoulders were smoked the other day from freaking moving all that stuff," said Mouser, whose team had just lost two weeks in a row. "But there's a level of accountability with everything. ... The image of one reflects the image of everybody -- everybody in that stadium is affected if you drop the ball. It's hard to replicate that in practice

'Everyone is completely bought in': How Matt Campb...

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