Blue White Illustrated

T H E M O N T H I N . . . If seems to you like James Franklin has been hiring full-time assistant coaches left and right at Penn State lately, you'd be right. Like three in a recent 24-day span. And nine over the past 26 months. Only time will tell how the most recent trio will pan out. But, at first blush, it looks like offensive coordinator/QB coach Kirk Ciarrocca and O-line coach Phil Trautwein are both upgrades. Not so sure about wide receivers coach Taylor Stubblefield, the Nittany Lions' fourth coach at WR in as many seasons, who is on his 12th job in 14 years. ... Such movement is, in part, the price of success. Two Penn State assistants left for head coaching jobs, three more for promotions to a coordinator position. There were also a couple of Franklin misses, as a few of the departed PSU assistants "were asked," a la Felix Unger of the Odd Couple, "to remove themselves" from their place of employment. Turnover is part of the business, especially when expectations are high and paychecks are even higher. MIKE POORMAN STATECOLLEGE.COM [Journey Brown] had a bit of a breakout this season, rushing for 890 yards and 12 touchdowns. He rushed for 100-plus yards in three of the last four games, in- cluding a 202-yard explosion in the Cotton Bowl win over Memphis. In new of- fensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca's run-and-go-route-heavy system, Brown and fellow backs Noah Cain and Devyn Ford will get lots of opportunities to shine, especially if a wideout emerges to stretch the field on some of those go routes. BILL CONNELLY ESPN.COM The Nittany Lions are a lot more than their meager basketball brand. It's a roster with a bona fide star in Lamar Stevens... who has figured out how to play a pa- tient, savvy and efficient offensive game. They've got man strength in the post, athletes that get into you on the perimeter and shooters. I don't know if Penn State can win the Big Ten. The Nittany Lions don't enjoy the intimidating home- court edge so many other Big Ten contenders do. That'll probably bite them. But in the NCAA tournament, these guys will physically be able to go toe-to-toe with anyone in college basketball this season. And what you also saw [against Michi- gan State] is a mental toughness I haven't seen from that program in a long time. There are some guys on that squad that have taken some beatings over the years and look sick of it. GRAHAM COUCH LANSING STATE JOURNAL When I looked at Penn State, they had been a top-10 team. Coach [Franklin] has done a great job getting them to that cusp where they're going to be considered and talked about every year about being in the College Football Playoff. That was attractive to me. The other thing that I really loved was that I felt like Coach has done a great job getting the program there and they hadn't done it in a while. I felt like I wanted to be a part of something like that. It felt special to me. The third thing was the fact that I grew up outside of Harrisburg and grew up as a Penn State fan. [It was] a chance to come back and coach at a school that I dreamed about playing at, which I was not good enough to do. It's really a dream come true. KIRK CIARROCCA on his decision to become PSU's offensive coordinator O P I N I O N S Q U O T E S into a football player. And college football is something really special to me and is always going to hold a very special place in my heart. I'm just really excited for the opportunity to stay connected with col- lege football and to try to give back." Urschel will be one of 13 "high-in- tegrity football experts" who will deter- mine the CFP participants over the next three seasons. Each committee member will receive video of every game, every week. The videos will be edited to elimi- nate commercials and even huddles. Said Urschel, "We just see nothing but football." But even so, he and his fellow committee members will be spending a lot of time watching games once the season begins. And he's entirely OK with that responsibility. "It's nice, because now I actually have a legitimate excuse to watch an unrea- sonable amount of college football in the fall," Urschel said. "This is something that I've been doing just because I like it, but now I know that I've been doing it all this time to prepare myself for this job. Little did I know." Still new to the position, Urschel doesn't know all of the details of his role, such as whether he would have to recuse himself from any conversations about Penn State's inclusion in the play- o8 7eld. But he's eager to get started and hopes that his playing experience will make him a valuable resource. "It's far too early to tell, but what I an- ticipate is, as a former player, I think I'll bring experience and the expertise of a player's perspective on di8erent teams," Urschel said. "I feel like I have a fairly strong knowledge of football in general. I think I bring a lot of technical expert- ise, the ability to watch a large number of football games and truly understand what's going on, and have a good recog- nition of what a team's strengths are and what a team's weaknesses might be." And as for his renowned mathematical skills? "I think I obviously have strong quan- titative skills, but I don't know. I'm not sure how useful that will be," Urschel said, "but I know for certain that my football expertise will be useful." ■

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