Iowa State football coach Matt Campbell is used to sitting in the living rooms of 16-18 year olds, trying to convince them to continue their football career at Iowa State.

But on Feb. 9, Campbell had to recruit a 54 year-old wrestling coach.

Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard brought Campbell to Blacksburg, Virginia, to help court then-Virginia Tech wrestling coach Kevin Dresser for the recently-opened Iowa State job.

“Coach Campbell recognized how important this hire was to this program and accepted my invitation to go,” Pollard said. “Because we knew the impact that it would probably have on coach to have the head football coach show up in your living room to meet with your family and to talk about coming to Iowa State.”

Pollard said having Campbell there served three purposes: Wow factor, help Dresser understand what it’s like to come to Iowa State and explain what it’s like to look the team in the eye and tell them you’re leaving.

“He might have set a precedent in hiring coaches now,” Dresser said to Trackwrestling. “I think he raised the bar and now everybody that wants to hire a coach might have to bring their football or basketball coach.

“Obviously, that coach just moved here a year and a half, two years ago was probably a really wise move on [Pollard’s] part.”

Dresser was officially hired as Iowa State’s coach Monday, and that’s in large part thanks to Campbell. 

Campbell’s biggest message to Dresser on the visit was that Dresser needed to be honest with his team when he told them he would be leaving.

“From my end of it, it was more being an asset to him where his he can ask some questions,” Campbell said. “The timing is never perfect and we had every opportunity to show that asset of how do you do it, and it’s hard. Especially when you build a program like he has and like we did at Toledo. There were definitely some parallels to that.”

Cambell also brought up all about the great things behind the scenes at Iowa State, Dresser said. Not just facilities, but people. He tried to make Dresser’s family comfortable with the move to Ames.

It especially had an impact on Dresser’s 14 year-old son.

“When he heard the head football coach from Iowa State was coming to our house, he was pretty pumped,” Dresser said.