The Regular Students Behind Penn State Football’s Big Recruiting Weekends

As Penn State looks to rebound following a 41-17 loss to Michigan this past Saturday and set a new course for the future of the 2022 season, the Nittany Lions will also look to set a course for the future of the program with a big recruiting weekend.

In total, the number of prospects and family members taking in the Beaver Stadium experience on Saturday night will hit triple-digits by the time it’s all said and done. While clearly not all of these players will end up at Penn State one day, nothing says a big recruiting opportunity quite like the White Out. Then again, when you get a ton of prospects on campus all at the same time, there’s a limit to how much attention they can get from the powers at be.

“The [thing is] making sure recruits and prospects understand this is not a game for you to bring your buddies from high school,” Penn State coach James Franklin said on Wednesday following practice. “It’s your parents, and that’s it. If you want to bring buddies from high school, it’s another game. We got a big recruiting ticket allotment for the whole athletic department. But this weekend tests you. It takes a lot organization. And also, just making sure people [knowing what they] are getting themselves into coming into town and parking and all those other things. There’s a lot that goes into it.

“This is going to be an opportunity for you to be able to get a bunch of people on campus,” Franklin added. “I think we have to be upfront and honest with a lot of them. It’s not a normal game day where we’re going to be able to spend a lot of time with them. Not just because of all the things that are going on from a White Out perspective, but also just the numbers. Just the raw numbers that there are of prospects, big-time prospects that are going to be here. It takes a lot of organization.”

So Penn State’s secret ingredient to keeping everyone happy, informed and well attended to while spending time on campus? Regular students. Lion Scouts and S.M.A.R.T (the Student Minority Advisory and Recruitment Team) are two student organizations tasked with 8+ hours of selling the merits of Penn State life to potential future Nittany Lions. Nobody knows campus better, and nobody can sell a school to a prospective student quite like a current one.

“We’re there every weekend for every home game,” Lion Scouts president Will Marsh told StateCollege.com. “And we do some practices over the spring semester as well. Pretty much any time when there are recruits coming on campus, the NCAA requires that if they’re on a visit, that they are escorted by tour guides for the same exact reason that when any other prospective student comes to campus. They’re also escorted by tour guides for the most part.”

On a weekend like this, it’s a busy affair. Marsh says that Lion Scouts — working in conjunction with assistant recruiting coordinator Shannon Wellman and director of player personnel Andy Frank — will provide roughly 15 tour guides any given weekend (about half of the total organization) to mingle among recruits and their families to answer any questions they might have. It’s a full day affair for the organization, and a juggling act to make sure everyone feels attended to.

“When [recruits] first get there, they’re invited to have a meal and they sit down and we sit with them and that’s when we kind of try and sell Penn State to them,” Marsh said. “Like a typical tour, we talk about campus, convince them to come here, all that. I try to have two guides paired up with [roughly] 20 recruits. So on a game like this, it’ll be a little bit more, but typically on a normal game, you’d have two guides paired up with about 15 to 20 recruits.”

The days are long as you might expect, starting in the lounge before the game ever begins and then ending as they gather again afterwards to watch Franklin’s press conference. For the tour guides themselves, it can be rewarding to see a big weekend go smoothly, but as Marsh noted with a laugh, Saturday night games tire everybody out and the only thing more rewarding than selling a future student on Penn State might just be finally getting to lay down in your own bed after a long day.

“[They] have been really valuable for us to work with the university and get experts about what it’s like to be a student at Penn State, and be able to give tours and answer questions, especially on days like Saturday where the numbers are going to be too much for just our football staff to handle,” Franklin added.

So next time your favorite prospect commits to Penn State you can thank James Franklin and his staff, but you can also thank a handful of students who have made it their mission to sell the vision of Penn State to future Nittany Lions.