Matson riding the storm at ISU

Humboldt native ready for final season with Cyclones

By PHIL MONSON
Caden Matson isn’t going anywhere. The 2022 Humboldt High School graduate graduates from Iowa State University in May and will play one more season of football for the Cyclones next fall.

Matson, an invited walk-on who has played special teams for the Cyclones the last three seasons, played quite a bit at safety this past season and worked his way into the starting lineup for the final two games of the 2025 season, where the Cyclones finished 8-4 overall.

“I played quite a bit in the secondary starting with the TCU game and then started in the Oklahoma State game and in the Kansas game,” Matson said.

Anyone who follows college football and Iowa State knows it’s been a wild ride over the past month for Matson and the Cyclones. It started with the unexpected and sudden departure of 10-year head coach Matt Campbell, who was named head coach at Penn State on Friday, Dec. 5. The team voted to decline a bowl invitational. What followed was a mass exodus of players who entered the transfer portal.

“Talk about a wave of emotion, that first week of December was insane. The last how many years in a row there have been allegations that Campbell was going to take this job or that job. As a player I never even questioned it over the last four years of my career,” Matson said. “I felt like it was all talk and wasn’t going to happen.”
“I met one-on-one with Campbell on Wednesday (Dec. 3) of that week. The day before this all happened. We were talking completely about what it was going to look like next year,” Matson said. “Literally within 24 hours it all changed dramatically for him and for us players.”

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