In case folks at home are unaware of how Penn State football was run under James Franklin, there’s one important thing that Matt Campbell has already flipped on its head: practice time. Franklin preferred to hold afternoon practices, but Campbell likes the team to hit the field early and start the day off with some football.

It might not seem like the most significant aspect to a program’s week-in, week-out preparation, but many Penn State players who lingered around after Franklin’s departure have noticed changes. Campbell is focused on building an identity and culture around the new-look Nittany Lion program. Part of that means that the Lasch Building is active before the sun even comes up.

Safety Marcus Neal Jr. said he wakes up at 5:50 a.m. and gets to the facility around 6:15. To him, it’s normal. He spent the last two seasons as a Cyclone under Campbell. To the Nittany Lions, the early-morning practice sessions took a bit of getting used to, but the early results have been positive.

“It’s been great. Really no cons to it. I mean, I see a bunch of benefits. You wake up, the first thing you get to do is play football. That’s pretty sick … Now you have the rest of the day to meet with your position group, meet with your coach, and watch all of practice,” offensive lineman Cooper Cousins said. “Instead of going [at] 2:30, 3, you get out at 6, you can’t really watch all the mistakes and corrections you want. You can get corrections literally after practice.”

Holding morning practice instills discipline into the team. When the players wake up, football is the first thing they think of. They are able to immediately act on those thoughts and start the day off on the right foot. The schedule also simulates a game day more than afternoon practices, oddly enough. Neil said having football on your mind as soon as you wake up is the same feeling he gets on Saturdays. No school, nothing. Just football. If the team gets in that mindset in the spring, it’ll be easier to lock in come fall.

Morning practices also allow for a more structured routine throughout the day. Neal said everybody eats breakfast before practice and the time after practice is spent with more nutrition and treatment. The defined practice block in the beginning of the day allows for nutrition routines and habits to take shape.

“When you practice in the morning, you’re fresh, you’re ready to roll … When you have afternoon practice, you usually think about what you’re eating at lunch because you don’t want to throw it up later,” offensive line coach Ryan Clanton said.

Clanton also said that practices aren’t long. Campbell likes to keep them efficient and to the point. Campbell has also really driven forward recovery as one of the most important factors of a successful football program.

“I came from a place before I got to Iowa State, where we practiced for hours, and we had really tough kids, but they would get tired towards the end of it. You were kind of sitting there going, ‘How much is enough?'” Clanton said. “And then, really, Coach Campbell. We’re so big in developing players outside of football, obviously, but he does a great job from a recovery standpoint, sports science, really diving into what’s going to keep the guys on the field.”

Campbell didn’t bring this very key change to Penn State’s schedule and routine out of the blue. Like Clanton and Neal said, Campbell ran this ship at Iowa State and knows the benefits. But what made him implement this in Ames in the first place?

Campbell said during the COVID-19 pandemic, he thought that switching to morning practice would provide his players a fresh start to the day with so much going on in the world. It would turn their minds off the outside and serve as an outlet for interaction. Campbell said they got the players’ best in this time frame.

Once the pandemic calmed down, Iowa State reverted back to its afternoon practice schedule, which Campbell said was due to his own bullheadedness.

“We slipped academically, and we slipped with our production, and it was a major mistake on my end. I think two years ago, three years ago now, we went to morning practices in the fall … What we saw was our our team GPA was around a 3.4 GPA [in] the last three fall semesters,” Campbell said.

Not only did the switch back to morning practices improve the Cyclones academically, but Campbell and the coaching staff saw a decrease in injuries. Players didn’t spend all day in class letting their bodies tense up; their days didn’t start slow, and they engaged with teammates and coaches bright and early.

One of the main criticisms of Franklin after he was fired was his inability to foster a true Penn State identity and culture. While there’s still a long way to go, Campbell’s small changes, like practice time, might prove to be the most effective in steering the program on the right path once more. Time will only tell.