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season of eligibility aAer injuring his knee in Penn State's opener last August. That obviously didn't happen. SPRING STORYLINE Franklin is surely going to like what he sees here. Carter, James and Breneman combined to make 58 catches for 799 yards and seven touchdowns last season. With Robinson and Felder gone, James is the team's top returning pass catcher with 25 receptions for 333 yards in 2013. The coaches also are very clearly excited about the po- tential of true freshman Mike Gesicki, but he won't arrive on campus until the summer. OFFENSIVE LINE KEY PERSONNEL G: Anthony Alosi (R- Jr.), Miles Die?enbach (R-Sr.), Derek Dowrey (R-So.), Brendan Mahon (R-Fr.), Angelo Mangiro (R-Jr.); T: Andrew Nelson (R-Fr.), Donovan Smith (R-Jr.), Chasz Wright (Fr.); C: Wendy Laurent (R-So.) LOSSES Garry Gilliam, Adam Gress, Tan- ner Hartman, Ty Howle, Eric Shrive, John Urschel THE GOOD The leA side of Penn State's line looks to be in pretty good shape, as long as everyone stays healthy. Smith is a two-year starter and should be a steady force for the Nittany Lions at tackle, while Die?enbach is back for his second season as the starting leA guard. Elsewhere? Nel- son earned rave reviews last fall and nearly ended up playing his way out of a redshirt before the coaches made the tough deci- sion to hold him out. THE BAD It's right there in the list of re- turning personnel. When Franklin and his sta? arrived in January, there were only two scholarship o?ensive tackles on campus, and only one of those guys (Smith) had any playing experience. Said Franklin, "That's not a position you want to be in." He addressed the issue imme- diately, calling Chance Sorrell and Brendan Brosnan shortly aAer he was introduced as head coach in hope of persuading the two Vanderbilt recruits to join him at Penn State. Both agreed, and so did two other tackle prospects: Noah Beh and Chasz Wright. Wright is already on cam- pus and will take part in spring practice. The others will get here this summer. It's oAen di@cult for o?ensive linemen to make an immediate impact, as they typ- ically need a year in the weight room before they're truly ready for college com- petition. But the Lions may not have that luxury this year. SPRING STORYLINE Keeping Smith and Nelson healthy will be a very high priority. An injury to either one could cause major p I t was during a Black Coaches As- sociation meeting in Orlando in the late 1990s that everything changed for James Franklin – and, by extension, for Sean Spencer. Franklin was coaching at East Stroudsburg at the time, Spencer at Massachusetts. They were chatting with then-Stanford coach Tyrone Willingham, both of them a bit star- struck and gushing about how they wanted to follow in Willingham's footsteps. Just then, Franklin's phone rang. On the line was a coach from James Madison o7ering him an opportuni- ty to join the Dukes' sta7 as a re- stricted-earnings assistant. Franklin, eager to move up to Divi- sion I-AA, was ecstatic. "He's falling all over the place, grabbing everybody and hugging them," Spencer recalled. "I'm think- ing, Wow, that's really exciting, real- ly cool. And from that day on, we've always been close and stayed in con- tact." Their relationship has turned out to be mutually bene6cial. When Vanderbilt hired him as its head coach in late 2010, Franklin lured CHAOS THEORY Sean Spencer – aka Coach Chaos – aims to wreak some havoc on PSU's opponents | SEAN SPENCER DEFENSIVE LINE COACH "At times you get emotional. You look around and you're like, 'I'm at Penn State.' I'm coaching at Penn State, and that's pretty cool." Mark Selders/Penn State Athletics S P R I N G F O O T B A L L R E P O R T

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