Iowa State football coach Matt Campbell handed out the Cyclone Manual before the season started. He calls it his blueprint for how he runs a program. It also details how he plans to turn ISU around.

Note: This story is part of the Ames Tribune Iowa State football guide. The guide comes out on Sunday, Aug. 28.

What the heck is this?

The question crossed Eli Rasheed’s mind as a blue binder was placed in front of him. The title, Rocket Manual, didn’t help explain too much to the first-year Toledo coach.

Then Rasheed started flipping through the pages. It started to make sense. It explained it all, actually, every detail of the program. It would be the most valuable thing Rasheed would pick up with the Rockets in 2009.

“It is the quote unquote bible,” Rasheed said. “Very organized. You know exactly what you are doing and why. I thought it was unbelieveable.”

In that binder Campbell would lay out how he’ll turn around Iowa State.

• • •

Bible. Playbook. Lifeblood of the program.

The manual goes by many different names. Iowa State coach Matt Campbell refers to it as the blueprint.

In it is the way a Campbell-led team will operate. It covers every aspect of the program from expectations to general guidelines. It’s divided into different sections. In-season, policies, recruiting, leadership, everything getting broken down in detail.

It’s all housed in a 14-inch binder. A new one gets handed out each season. It’s organized, but Campbell’s overflows with loose pages and notes.

Scripted practices for each day of the season are inside. So is the key to why Campbell won 35 games at Toledo in four-plus years.

It’s a complex document to get to a simple mission statement. The blueprint is designed to maximize potential, both of the team and individual.

“There is a process for our program to get to where it needs to go,” Campbell said, “but I think there is a process for our kids as a team to be as successful as we can possibly be.”

This is why Campbell harps on process. It’s one of his favorite words. He believes there is a right way to do things. It’s full of things he learned while playing and coaching under Larry Kehres at Mount Union. Things he saw work as an assistant at Bowling Green. Things he saw others, like Urban Meyer, succeed with.

“There is this blueprint of here is how the whole thing needs to be aligned,” Campbell said. “Here’s how we recruit. This is what we recruit at each position. This is what we need to look for and how we need to approach this to be successful.”

The manual outlines exactly what ISU seeks in a potential prospect. It’s general and specific at the same time. Campbell is after players that love football, show a work ethic and perseverance.

Each position comes with its own check list. Take running back.

Playmaking is a must. So is vision and speed. It must jump out on film or in person.

Bigger running backs are preferred. They believe someone 190 pounds or 200 pounds will be in a better position to handle the grind of the position.

No detail is too small for the blueprint.

There is a correct way to workout. (Don’t forget to stretch).

There is a specific dress code. (Team issued gear).

There is the correct way to act on the practice field. (Don’t ever take your helmet off, and run from drill to drill).

“It’s the little things,” Campbell said. “It’s the discipline of the little things that make up at the end of this the big things.”

• • •

The blueprint spread like a virus through the Toledo program. First, with the offensive line, which Campbell started coaching in 2009. Then the entire offense when he became offensive coordinator in 2010 The whole team picked it up by the time he became head coach before the Military Bowl in 2011.

Building a culture at Toledo is one thing. Starting it up at ISU is another.

Campbell knows as much. It’s why he sat back and looked at Toledo. What worked? How can this be made better? What did Tim Beckman, the head coach before Campbell, do that didn’t work?

“Applying a lot of that here when we came in at Iowa State was taking those lessons learned and then watching other people do that over the last couple of years,” Campbell said.

The first thing he duplicated from his Toledo days was how he hired his staff. He took those who were loyal, coaches he thought were good people.

He watched Meyer climb the coaching ranks from Bowling Green to Utah to Florida do the same thing. At each spot success quickly followed.

“That was a huge, huge point for me that I thought was key,” Campbell said. “I think you see guys that go on and get jobs and don’t take anybody with them and all of a sudden they are coaching their own coaches and the kids get left by the wayside and by the time they are ready to try to perform they are so far behind they never catch up.”

Campbell doesn’t want to run up to the pack. He wants to get to the front of it. So he studied how Oregon, Baylor and Clemson were built into national powers in the last decade. Each used varying degrees of marketing, unique schemes and recruiting success to become top programs. Campbell did find one constant that tied them together.

“Every one of those programs are aligned from the equipment room to the training room to the academic support,” Campbell said. “Every person that is in this program is aligned to the right vision and right success.”

It’s why he sat everyone, from coordinators to video guys to media relations personnel, for a meeting this summer. He outlined the blueprint. He outlined the roles each person would play in turning ISU into a consistent winner.

“We talk about the expectations and never deviating from it,” running backs coach Louis Ayeni said. “Understanding the things we are lacking in our program, whether it’s leadership, whether it’s strength in the weight room or strength on the field.”

All three were obstacles that needed to be tackled in Campbell's first season. He says as much. Just don’t expect him to discuss the obstacles that historically keep ISU from winning. He won’t talk about the university residing in a state that doesn’t produce talent in droves.

Instead, he focuses on what he finds unique about ISU.

“We are 45 miles from Des Moines,” Campbell said. “We have a big city. We have an airport. You can fly anybody here any time. You’ve got a world class academic institution and we’ve been able to really sell it and use it in terms of a recruiting aspect, our engineering program, the (agriculture) school and the business school. Then I think the fan base here has been a huge selling point.”

The blueprint even includes the proper way to sell the Cyclones.

• • •

Campbell noticed a trend. People could come in to Toledo and almost as if it was a birthright they’d be in the discussion for or offered other jobs. He was still young, a 30-year-old kid, but when he became the offensive coordinator he began truly thinking about his future as a head coach.

He started downloading all his football thoughts. It came out easy. Everything he learned about success from his father, Rick, a high school coach, and from Mount Union, Bowling Green and Toledo poured out. So did why his time at Pittsburgh — Campbell spent a year there as a player before transferring to Mount Union — didn’t work.

He started jotting things down and organizing them.

“I’m a huge notes guy,” Campbell said. “I got a million binders.”

It was everything he preached to his position group, now getting put in one spot.

“Matt is one of those guys that knew he wanted to be a head coach probably when he was about 18 years old,” offensive coordinator Tom Manning said. “He’s probably approached the game a lot differently than a lot of other people I’ve been around. Fanatical about X’s and O’s, but I think Matt was one of those guys that’s always had the ability to not only relate to players, but to coaches and understand how everything matters.”

He’s tried to learn from coaches he admired. Either by studying them, listening to their speeches or by working their camps. He’d bounce topics off of other Toledo coaches, using them as sounding boards as he fine tuned his blueprint.

“It was good,” Ayeni said. “We like to take a big idea, (Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald) does a great job there, we take this idea and make it our own. We would never settle for copying somebody else’s deal and how do we make it even better?”

It led Campbell to looking into how Boise State became a winning program. He figured there was something he could use at Toledo. He studied why NFL teams like New England and college powers like Alabama and Ohio State sustained success.

”What are they doing that we are all missing in evaluation?” Campbell said.

It was the same things he learned when studying Clemson at ISU. Most of the blueprint is rooted in what worked for him as he won five national championships as a player and coach at Mount Union.

“It’s been the exact same way,” Rasheed said. “He don’t like deviating from who he is. No doubt about it.”

• • •

The page Rasheed always goes back to is on players and coaches.

“That relationship could be sacred if done correctly,” Rasheed said.

Of course, the blueprint lines out how to do it. It starts with players trusting their coach. It continues with having a relationship with the player, breaking down any barriers between them.

“The key point is that guys will respect you and players will work harder for you if they know you.”

Part of that trust with the staff is players buying into the blueprint. It outlines more than just how the program is to be built. Talk to the staff about the blueprint and they’ll quickly bring up culture.

Everything expected of them is there for the players to see.

“This is who we are.” Manning said. “This is what we believe in and that is kind of where we see our program going.”

Just like with the program, the devil is in the details. Success on the field is tied into success off the field. One leads right into the other.

It worked for Campbell. It worked for his players. It will work for the Cyclones.

“Outside of football, academically, your social life, once you compromise,” Campbell said, “then it’s really easy to compromise on the football field and once you learn to hold yourself accountable off the field then you find it’s really easy to hold yourself accountable on the football field too. That’s been our biggest preaching point.”

It’s already starting to take hold. Academics were a problem Campbell identified when he was hired. He made it a focus on academics in the off-season. The Cyclones topped a 3.0 GPA in the spring semester, posting their highest mark in years, according to Campbell.

There is no direct correlation between grades and winning, but for Campbell one can’t come without the other.

The players are starting to understand their coach’s viewpoint.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had that kind of document before,” running back Mike Warren said. “There’s a lot of stuff in there. Everything is related and everything can impact winning. It’s really good to have.”

• • •

Campbell gathers his coaches for a meeting in late July. He hands out his new blueprint, now being called the Cyclone Manual.

This gathering serves as a kickoff to the 2016 season. Campbell gives a state of the union address. Where he sees the program at, what must occur for the Cyclones to be their best.

He dives into a discussion on star players. He’s convinced ISU won’t be able to accomplish anything without the Mike Warren’s and Allen Lazard’s, playing to their potential this season.

‘A’ players need to earn ‘A’ grades.

No one else will be able to perform at that level. It’s on the coaches as well as the players to ensure it happens.

With the top players forming a foundation, the rest of the team can follow suit. The ‘B’ players will only need to grade out as a ‘B’.

If that happens ISU will have a chance this season.

“It’s not that great teams have the best players,” Campbell said. “Great teams have a work ethic and have an off the field mentality that they are able to come to work with a purpose every day. They take care of the little things off the field.

“Those are issues that to me it’s funny. The teams that win are able to bypass a lot of those things and are able to understand the value of doing things right.”

It’s true. The blueprint says so.