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C OAC H S P E A K| EXCERPTS FROM JAMES FRANKLIN'S SIGNING DAY PRESSER There were a lot of kids decommit- ting and flipping to and from other schools. How stressful is that on a coaching staff? How difficult does it make it, and how do you feel you've come out of that flurry of action? If you take everything into considera- tion, I think we did really well. We hired a new offensive line coach. We didn't lose one offensive line commit. We got the No. 1 running back in the country committed to us, and he stays true. His mom was a huge part. She really saw the big picture and really believed in every- thing that was going on. You look, and there is a program in the ACC I think that had 24 decommitments this year. I saw a stat somewhere where there was some ridiculous number, like almost 250 decommitments from the coaches' convention on. So it's the way the in- dustry is going. It's really not the way we do business. We've been pretty fortunate over our last five years not to have a lot of drama. We pretty much knew who was coming and who wasn't beforehand. This year was a little bit different from that per- spective. But overall, we don't do a whole lot of recruiting in the 11th hour. We were able to build relationships and stick with the guys for the long term. If you look, with most of our commit- ments, that was the case. But there were some challenges, no doubt about it. I'm really, really proud of the coaches and how they handled that, how they han- dled that adversity. I couldn't be more proud and more excited about the di- rection because it's easy to look at things when everything is going smooth and easy. It's [a question of] how do you handle adversity? Coach [Joe] Moorhead talks all the time [about] the storm. At first you kind of overcome the storm and then you be- come the storm. That's what we're re- ally trying to do: overcome some of the adversity that we've been through and then become the storm later on. You mentioned the scrambling, the challenges particularly this past month, with some decommitments and things. Why do you think that was more the case this year than in previous years? And you also men- tioned not being satisfied until you're No. 1. What's it going to take to take that next step up the ladder? I would like to focus on the progress. I would like to focus on the last two re- cruiting classes, [which] were clearly two of the better recruiting classes in the last five years. I know you don't want to talk about that, but I'd love to talk about that. We had the No. 1 run- ning back in the country committed to us. I'd like to talk about all the signifi- cant positive things that are going on in our program. Obviously, everybody knows coming in here [what the difficulties were]. I don't need to get into the challenges. Those things have been talked about enough. So what I'd like to talk about is all the tremendous progress, all the great families and all the great football players who are joining us, and that's our focus. When you were speaking to Miles Sanders' mom this morning, you joked around with her that you guys might try to write a book with all the things that you guys went through when you were trying to recruit Miles. What specifically were some of the things? I think what happens is at Penn State we spend almost all of our time [focus- ing on] all the wonderful things we have here at Penn State: the academic repu- tation, the history, the traditions, the tremendous support that we get, and the direction that we're going. You've heard this before: This is a four-year decision. I think when you look at it that way, Penn State is a tremendous option. And I think Miles and his mom understood that. That was the commit- ment and that was the reason they made the decision. What happens is, at the end of the re- cruiting period, it can get aggressive, and it can get nasty, and it can get re- lentless at times. We've been fortunate that we've got kids who get that. And what happens is, if you leave the door cracked open for people to come in, that's what they're going to do, they're going to attack. I remember in the past, I've heard about schools saying they want kids to commit to schools because they know that's the school they have to attack. That's all they do, spend their time at- tacking that one school. So, you know, I think when you have a strong young man, and when you have a strong parent F E B R U A R Y 4 , 2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 11 SEE FRANKLIN PAGE 12 WELCOME WAGON Coaches and support staff gather at the Lasch Building to welcome the Class of 2016. Photo by Tim Owen

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