Another bye week means another weekend spent on the recruiting trail for James Franklin and the rest of the Nittany Lion staff.
The destination this time around? The Philadelphia area starting Thursday night and into Saturday evening. Franklin plans on catching as many games as possible, likely taking his now famous helicopter rental from game to game. He won’t be alone though. He’s bringing defensive line coach Sean Spencer with him.
Thanks to reduced and removed NCAA sanctions Franklin is permitted to sign 25 players to Penn State’s 2015 recruiting class. That total is the maximum that any NCAA team is allowed to sign. Penn State’s recruiting class is currently ranked 9th in the nation by Scout.com with 19 verbal commitments.
Franklin’s long term goal will be to continue bringing in better and better talent as Penn State recovers from those scholarship restrictions. As he pointed out on Wednesday in a conversation with the media, as the second youngest team in Division I football, those kinds of issues don’t change over night or over the course of a single season.
“You might get your numbers back on the offensive line next year, but they’re still going to be almost all freshmen and sophomore, maybe a few juniors,” Franklin said.
“If you look at most programs across the country people usually don’t play on the offensive line until your redshirt sophomore year. I think that’s where it will change. I think our numbers will be back but we’ll still be young. You don’t go from being the second youngest team in the country to mature over night.”
Even with plenty of issues, Penn State continues to march toward a primetime date with Ohio State in Happy Valley next weekend. It will be a big recruiting weekend for both teams and while Penn State won’t be able to change things with the snap of a finger, making a good impression on potential Nittany Lions of the future can go help speed up the recovery process.
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