During the home stretch of the college football recruiting season, Andy Frank tries to get at least four-and-a-half hours of sleep a night.
“I can make do on that,” says Penn State’s director of player personnel. “That’s the minimum.”
But that’s not Frank’s key number when he hits the sack late-night in December and January, leading up to National Signing Day.
And we don’t mean counting the number of uncommitted sheep who run 4.5’s, either.
Frank counts the number of scholarships Penn State has left to give. Not the number already spoken for – which wouldn’t help when his boss, James Franklin, wants to extend a last-minute offer (of which there were a few over the past week).
“The number left to give. That’s what counts,” says Frank, a self-avowed numbers guy and owner of an engineering degree from Princeton (Class of 2001). Frank is Penn State’s resident Russell Crow-like beautiful mind kind of guy, having spent four years as an engineer in Michigan before heading to work for the Vanderbilt football program in 2005.
A former defensive back and special teams player at Princeton, Frank did it all at Vandy – and did a lot of it before Franklin came to town in late 2010. Frank was a defensive graduate assistant, defensive quality control assistant, assistant recruiting coordinator and assistant director of football operations, before serving three years (2011-13) as Franklin’s player personnel coordinator at Vanderbilt. He’s built for the job, which – if this were the NFL — would part GM and part capologist.
“I’m definitely a numbers guy,” said Frank, who also owns a master’s in education from Vanderbilt. “I like when we put the numbers up on the board and you can see what they mean and tell you what to do, where to go.”
THE ENGINEER
Frank engineers Penn State’s entire recruiting operation, directing coaches where to go and who to see, keeping track of scholarships to give and deciding which prospects to offer them to. Since he arrived at PSU with Franklin in January 2014, Frank has overseen the recruiting of three Penn State classes and the awarding of 70 scholarships on three National Letter of Intent Days in just over 25 months.
That includes the 20 recruits that Penn State inked on Wednesday. It was a mad dash to the finish for Frank and Franklin, juggling decommits, handling flips and making sure five-stars like running back Miles Sanders, the nation’s No. 1 high school running back, stuck with the Nittany Lions.
“In some ways, the contingency plan was ever-evolving,” Frank said on Wednesday. “So it’s not an, ‘If this happens, that is going to happen,’ because there are too many things happening all at one time. You’re re-evaluating and coming up with a new plan day-by-day and sometimes hour-by-hour. The challenges for me personally a lot of the time are with the coaches’ travel. What they’re doing, how they’re getting there. It’s a challenge for the staff of, ‘Who’s next? Who do you want to go to next? Who are you going to offer the scholarship to?’ or ‘Who are you going to recruit harder?’”
That mix was made tougher because Frank had to incorporate three new assistant coaches – offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead, offensive line coach Matt Limegrover and safeties coach Tim Banks – on the fly, over the past several weeks. But it wasn’t as hard as it looked.
“In some ways, it pretty seamless,” Frank said. “Fortunately for them the blueprint was pretty simple. Whatever position they coach, they have to go recruit those kids. You’re not worrying about what area they’re going to recruit. Those types of things aren’t really in play; you’re finishing this class off, particularly in the end when you’re moving things around. You get a new O-line coach, he better go see his O-line commitments and any of the targets you have. Same with your safeties coach. New offensive coordinator? You better go see all of the offensive guys.”
THE JUCO’S
Penn State ended up signing two players from the junior college ranks – Tyrell Chavis and Brenon Thrift. Chavis came by way of Nassau Community College and, before that, Fork Union Military Academy (Christian Hackenberg’s alma mater), while Thrift was at Gateway High School, Temple and, most recently, Lackawanna Community College. Despite their circuitous routes, in the end Franklin wasn’t going to sign anyone he didn’t think was going to be able to contribute.
“Regardless of the rating (from recruiting sites), it’s where we evaluate them,” Frank said. “You’re always trying to keep the guys who are above your line to help you win. You don’t ever want to dip below that. That was kind of our task at the end here – to try to figure who are those guys, what is the level (they’re at) and get the ones we can get who are above that line. If the rest weren’t there, then we’ll save the scholarships.”
With depth very thin at defensive tackle, both Chavis and Thrift could – and may need to — help the Nittany Lions sooner rather than later.
“In both of those cases, we had an immediate need at defensive tackle and that’s where that comes from,” Frank said. “It’s a way to solve a problem that you had maybe a little bit quicker than a high school kid could. In reality, having a kid with a shorter stay is – I don’t want to say it’s a less critical situation, but they’re only going to be on scholarship for a shorter window of time. If he can play two of his two years, that’s 100% of his time. Whereas if you’re recruiting a high school offensive lineman who is going to be here five years, he may only play two years – so his percentage of time playing is actually less than the kid who was here for two years.”
Frankly, it comes down to numbers like that with Andy. Same goes to the shift in his attention to Penn State’s next recruiting class, which includes early commits quarterback Sean Clifford and linebacker Dylan Rivers. Frank has already switched his focus to the Class of 2017, which had previously occupied about 40% of his time. No more.
“Maybe it was a 60%/40% of your attention, now it’s 100% of your attention for recruiting,” he said. “As time goes further, 2018 and 2019 will get a bigger percentage.”
THE FUTURE
The task at Penn State, with three successive recruiting classes under his belt, will get easier for Frank.
“Looking at the roster right now, there is not a position that just jumps out at you and says, ‘Hey, we have to fill a significant, significant gap,’ ” Frank said. “We need to fill everywhere, but there’s not that one gaping hole. As time goes on, we may dig a little deeper and say one position is a little more critical than the others.
“We’ll set numbers at each position. Those are guidelines, but they are by no means what we’ll end up signing at every position. I think every staff probably does it differently. You put the number two for running backs and the running backs coach goes out and he tries to find two and everyone on the staff knows he’s going to ultimately sign two.
“But it’s one big puzzle. If we only get one running back and there’s a wide receiver who can get who’s a better player rather than a second running back, we’re probably going to take them.”
To be frank with you, Andy figures Franklin is in the “18-20 range next year” when it comes to available scholarships that his boss can dole out.
Of course, it’s been only a few days since Signing Day. So he might have to sleep on it.
