Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1400830
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 13 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M "I'm not thinking about it constantly. If you think about getting hurt, you're going to get hurt. I think you've just got to focus on the task at hand and play football. Injuries are a part of football. That's not really coming across my mind at all. I'm just ready to ball." — Senior CB Tariq Castro-Fields "I think sometimes as you're building a pro- gram to win championships, you're going to run into some obstacles. The challenge is: How quickly can you change it and identify it and keep moving forward? I think Coach [James] Franklin has been able to do that. This is a good football team." — Howard Griffith, BTN analyst, on PSU "I think he's one of the bright minds in college football. I think he's on a lot of people's shortlist to become a head coach." — Gerry DiNardo, BTN analyst, on offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich "On Feb. 2, 2022, Penn State coach James Franklin will turn 50 years old. That day is also the second of two National Letter of Intent sign - ing days for the Penn State class of 2022. (The first, and far more important, when high school seniors will officially sign with a school, is Dec. 15, 2021.) It is also Groundhog Day. By then, [Franklin] and the Nittany Lions will have the 2021 season — on and off the field — under their belts. If he can hold onto all his current verbal commitments, Franklin may have had his best recruiting season ever. Or, at the very least, it will be a Groundhog Day-like repeat of his Class of 2018, which featured two five-stars, 16 three-stars and an average per-recruit rating of 3.826 stars, according to Rivals.com. The Class of 2022 averages 3.792 stars." — Mike Poorman, StateCollege.com "A big part of John returning to Penn State was Penn State. Penn State sold itself, and it's been doing that for four years for him. … When I got here, they told me how special this place was. Until you get here and are ingrained in it, you don't realize it. John's realized it. He knows how special this place is and he's invested a lot in this place, and Penn State is going to invest right back into him in the same exact way." — Head coach Micah Shrewsberry on 6-foot-9 graduate forward John Harrar's decision to return to Penn State men's basketball after entering the transfer portal "He needs to play opening day. You have to trust what your eyes are telling you. And when I watch him, I see a fluid and explosive player. This game's not too big for him. Some guys run 4.3. Some guys play 4.3. He's the kind of guy who plays fast. He looks like he's done this at this level before." — Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy talking to NBC's Peter King about rookie linebacker Micah Parsons "It was definitely very difficult, but I think the reason I decided this route was that it's always been in my heart [since I was] a little kid. This is just a dream come true to me." — Lonnie White Jr. talking to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about his decision to play pro baseball rather than attend PSU on a football scholarship "You're looking at him." — Jahan Dotson, asked at Big Ten media days to name the nation's top wide receiver going into the 2021 season They Said It "A Penn State white-out at home at night is pretty incredible. I covered the 2018 game against Ohio State and the crowd was electric. I took a video of my glass of water in the press box, and it resembled the moment in Jurassic Park when the T. rex was approaching, creating ripples in the water. The fans were shaking the press box, they were all in unison, all in white and they were relent - less the entire night. I don't know how anyone on the field could hear anything, because the fans were so into the game." — Tom VanHaaren, ESPN.com, citing Penn State as his favorite in-game atmosphere in college football Penn State's raucous White Out environment has become famous across college football. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL