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best of the situation. He practiced with his Woodson teammates throughout the 2012 season and also worked out with PrimeXample, a defensive back training academy run by former NFL standout Troy Vincent and Roman Morris, father of recent Penn State cornerback Stephon Morris. WHAT HE WON Smith is rated a threestar recruit by ESPN.com and a twostar prospect by Rivals.com and Scout.com. ESPN ranks Smith the No. 60 cornerback in the country. WHERE HE VISITED In addition to Penn State, Smith received scholarship offers from Kansas, Hawaii and Colorado. Ohio State, Illinois, Syracuse and Maryland also showed interest. WHO OPENED THE DOOR Larry Johnson spearheaded Smith���s recruitment, and his efforts paid off. Smith was also able to build a strong relationship with his future defensive coordinator, John Butler. ���I���m particularly close to Coach Johnson,��� he told Rivals. ���I have a great relationship with him and Coach Butler.��� QUOTABLE Smith: ���I like the idea of Penn State ��� the education. A degree from there speaks volumes in the job market. The coaching staff is outstanding, and Penn State is my dream school.��� PHIL���S TAKE Smith is easily the hardest member of Penn State���s class to evaluate. Despite being ineligible his final year at Woodson, he was able to enroll at Penn State on Jan. 7. I expect Smith to have an excellent opportunity to make the depth chart this season at either the free safety or the boundary cornerback position because of depth issues. He has excellent size and decent speed. During his sophomore and junior seasons at Carroll, he played both free safety and cornerback, totaling more than 60 tackles. He has excellent ball reactions and plays the run exceptionally well. I project him as a cornerback. Nittany Lion recruits accept the challenge s reporters filed into the Lasch Building for Bill O���Brien���s news conference on Feb. 6, a Penn State football player watched the crowd gather and wondered aloud what was going on. With players enmeshed in the daily grind of bitterly cold morning workouts, afternoon film study and constant strength training ��� with the start of spring practice still weeks away ��� the sudden influx of media attention was unexpected. ���It���s signing day,��� a reporter explained. ���Oh, yeah,��� the player said. ���Four and five stars don���t exist when we get out on the practice field.��� Inside the Penn State football program, that is not a unique mentality. At the end of the news conference, O���Brien was asked whether he pays attention to recruiting rankings. Before the question was even out of the reporter���s mouth, Penn State���s second-year coach was shaking his head. He acknowledged that he respects the profession and the people who do it for a living ��� including some of his personal friends. But the message was clear: No one has any idea what kind of career these recruits will have, and it would be foolish to evaluate their potential or their value to the program on the basis of how many stars they received from the recruiting sites. ���At the end of the day, that has nothing to do with how I look at a student-athlete or prospective student-athlete,��� O���Brien said. ���I look at a prospective student-athlete with our staff and I say, ���Look, this is what we need, OK? How does this guy fit what we need? What does he do well? What are his weaknesses? How is he A going to fit in with our locker room? How is he going to do in class his freshman year? How is he going to do working in the community for us? How does he fit? ���This is a different place. Penn State is a very unique, special place to play college football, and so I don���t care about stars and rankings. ��� I just know that I feel good about the players who we got here in this class.��� For all the praise he gave to the Nittany Lions��� only five-star recruit ��� quarterback Christian Hackenberg ��� O���Brien had an equally enthusiastic take on lesser-known and lowerranked prospects like defensive end Curtis Cothran, linebacker Zayd Issah and offensive lineman Andrew Nelson, all of whom hail from Pennsylvania. The abundance of lowerprofile players in Penn State���s class prompted a breakdown of the New England Patriots��� last Super Bowl roster, which featured a lot of players who didn���t cause the recruiting analysts to swoon. ���My point is, when we go out and work our process, our system of recruiting, we try to find the right guys who fit our program, and that���s what we think we did,��� O���Brien said. ���So certainly, there are some guys on that list right there who weren���t as highly recruited who we think are going to be good players.��� You don���t need to buy into the signing-day hype to understand that Penn State���s new recruits ��� five early enrollees, 12 signees and an even larger contingent of run-on athletes ��� have already proven something. They have shown a steadfast commitment to a program that is facing tremendous uncertainty. Whether following

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