Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/260491
E xcept for the team that :nished atop the rankings, it was a sur- prising and volatile recruiting year for the Big Ten. It was no surprise to see Ohio State in :rst place in the Big Ten rankings that Rivals.com released on Feb. 5. The Buckeyes had held the top spot for four months leading up to signing day, and they maintained it once all the faxes had arrived. They signed 23 players, including one :ve-star and 15 four- star prospects. The :ve-star player was linebacker Raekwon McMillan of Hinesville, Ga., while the four-star group included linebacker Dante Booker of Akron, Ohio; defensive end Jalyn Holmes of Norfolk, Va.; o;ensive lineman Demetrius Knox of Fort Worth, Texas; defensive back Erick Smith of Cleve- land; wide receiver Curtis Samuel of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and defensive back Da- mon Webb of Detroit. The Buckeyes did a tremendous job in their home state, landing nine Ohio prospects. At the top of that list are linebacker Kyle Berger and athlete Marshon Lattimore of Cleveland and offensive lineman Kyle Trout of Lan- caster. All three are rated as four-star players. While there was nothing surprising about Ohio State's recruiting success this year, the storylines at Michigan, Buckeyes, Spartans set pace 1 4 T H E F R A N K L I N F A C T O R Thomas. Where are they at physical- ly? You guys are going to find out real quick that we don't talk about injuries. I'm not really sure what you're talking about. All of them are as healthy as they've ever been. They drink lots of milk, they stretch, they stay in great shape, but we will never talk about in- juries. That's their business, that's the program's business, and we want every- body that we're competing against to be concerned about our entire roster, so we won't discuss injuries and I'm not sure what you're talking about. All of them are as strong, as fast and as flexible and explosive as you can imagine. You should see these guys. Beautiful. A lot has been made about you going after Vanderbilt's commitments. Did you feel that was right, and does a coach usually sell his school to the kids or does he sell himself? Yeah, I'm very comfortable. I go to sleep at night feeling really good about how we conduct our business. When we got the job, we called all the Penn State commitments, had great conversations with them, kinda told them who we were and the next thing we did was call all our former Vanderbilt commitments to let them know what happened and why, and to be honest, a lot of those kids started recruiting us, and it's because of the relationship. And we all know the school is a huge factor, but once the guys narrow it down to a number of schools, it's no different than anybody else in this room. It comes down to relationships, it comes down to who you're most com- fortable with. And from that point on, in my opinion, it's my responsibility to do everything in my power to help Penn State be as successful as we possibly can, and we leave that up to the kids and their parents to decide what is in their best interest. I'm very, very comfortable with our staff and how we handle our business and couldn't be more proud to put a product and team on the field that everybody can be excited about. Could you identify three or four traits that a great college football re- cruiter has to have in order to have success? You've got to be confident. You've got to walk into these schools, and the guys that we're going to be recruiting against are going to be the top pro- grams in the country and you've got be confident to walk in and compete with those guys. You have to know your product and sell your product – all the strengths and the history and traditions that we have here at Penn State. You have to have some personality, you have to be charis- matic and honest and open and up-front and transparent with everything. I feel like that one of the strengths of this staff is guys who are very, very true to who they are, and I think that comes off and it's not something that happens overnight. It's years and years of recruit- ing and developing a relationship. You mentioned earlier how many states you went to to get recruits for this class. In the future, do you plan on focusing more on the mid-Atlantic region? First of all, we're going to go wherever we have to go to find players. If that is Denmark, if that is Japan, wherever we have to go to find players we're going to do it. Some of our coaches are trying to decide who is going to recruit Hawaii and places like that. The Bahamas have just started big-time football. We're going to go where we have to. Our job is to do a great job in this state. I think you guys have heard that before, and in this region, as well. Penn State has done historically a great job six hours from campus, but on top of that, we want to recruit nationally by posi- tion. So we're not going to have a coach necessarily assigned to Idaho, but if there is a great player from the state of Idaho and he's at your position, you bet- ter know who he is. That's kinda the philosophy we're taking about. That's how we will cover the rest of the coun- try. ■