Hours before one of the biggest games of the college basketball season, Matt Campbell passed out hot cocoa to those Iowa State students waiting in the cold to get inside Hilton Coliseum.

Then after the Cyclones toppled Kansas, Campbell was there with the fans again celebrating.

Coach Campbell passing out hot cocoa to @cyclonealley #CyclONEnation pic.twitter.com/bGIqDKVKz4

— Cyclone Football (@CycloneFB) January 25, 2016

From afar for some time, Campbell said he had become enamored with the passion he saw out of Ames. So when the opportunity arrived for Campbell to become Iowa State’s new head football coach, he jumped on it.

"Iowa State has everything you want as a coach: a great fan base, great facilities, great institution," Campbell said in a recent phone interview with ESPN.com. "If you bring a blueprint of creating a culture, the opportunities are endless."

As one of the most successful Group of 5 coaches over the past five years at Toledo, Campbell could have waited for another job to come along.

But he says he saw Iowa State as a "hidden gem," with the devoted fan base already in place.

"We’d played in some great places like Oklahoma, Florida," Campbell said. "But when we came out here to play in Ames, I was so blown away by the experience, the environment, the people."

Indeed, fan support has always been a strength for Iowa State. After all, following a recent renovation to Jack Trice Stadium, the Cyclones boast the third-biggest stadium in the Big 12, trailing only Texas and Oklahoma. And even as Iowa State has struggled over the years, Jack Trice usually has been full.

With that foundation, Campbell believes he can help bring the rest to elevate the Cyclones to heights they have never seen before on the field.

"When you’ve seen some of these programs come out of nowhere the last few years, they’ve been in those places where people are passionate for the program," Campbell said. "That’s going to be our first selling point at Iowa State -- the energy here in Ames."

So far, Campbell has been selling Iowa State with a flurry. Since taking over at the end of November, he and his staff have secured a whopping 19 verbal commitments. Their biggest triumph so far came via four-star offensive tackle Sean Foster, who turned down Nebraska, Minnesota and Cal to pledge to the Cyclones.

Foster, who hails from Mundelein, Illinois, fits into the recruiting identity Campbell will attempt to forge at Iowa State. Though fan support has been a strength, location has been a major obstacle in recruiting for the Cyclones in the past. They are a great distance from the rest of the Big 12’s recruiting lifeblood, which is Texas recruits. And the Cyclones have a limited in-state talent pool they have to share with Iowa.

Campbell, however, said Iowa State can overcome that by becoming the Big 12 option for recruits in the surrounding four-hour radius to Ames, which includes stops like Minneapolis, Chicago and Kansas City.

"Recruiting has changed so much the last few years with social media, the internet, you’re able to find players across the country," Campbell said. "But the four-hour radius is going to be our starting point. We can sell the brand of Big 12 football to the Midwest. We want to do a great job in those areas before we look we go outside."

Getting players to Ames, Campbell said, is just the first step. The second is developing them within a culture that instills the belief of winning.

"Figuring out what it takes to win day-in, day-out is really important," said Campbell, who said he used Boise State as a model for how to build a winning program at Toledo. "You have to create an environment and culture and not only recruit players to it, but develop them in the program."

That will be a challenge at Iowa State. The Cyclones have never reached double-digit wins in the history of the program. And they have had only one winning season since 2005.

Campbell said that was among the first items on his mind when he put his staff together. To find assistants who had been part of winning programs, whether it be Division III power Mount Union, where Campbell and offensive coordinator Tom Manning played, or Ohio State, where assistant Alex Golesh went.

Campbell, however, doesn't see Iowa State's losing past as an impossible impediment.

As he did long before he arrived, he sees it as an opportunity.

"Study what some of these programs have done in places like Ames," Campbell said. "Look at Baylor’s rise, Clemson in South Carolina, Oregon stuck up in Oregon -- they created a culture around the program, started winning some recruiting battles and built great programs.

"We have the belief, the vision that we’re going to build something special here."