Blue White Illustrated

who had been hearing from other schools. And as it turned out, several of those recruits had been listening. Be- tween the end of the regular season and the start of February, Penn State lost six recruits, forcing Franklin and assistants to scramble as they worked to get their numbers back up in the ;nal days of the recruiting cycle. Even for a sta= that prides itself on its preparedness, a sta= that has backup plans for its backup plans, this was a challenge. As Franklin said on signing day, "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." Penn State le? that door open by ending its season with a four-game losing streak and barely ;nishing above .500 for the second year in a row. The team's skid, coupled with a series of coaching changes and player transfers, occurred at an inop- portune time, in that one of its key Big Ten rivals – Michigan – was starting to get its mojo back. Of the six recruits who exited a?er the season, three ended up with the Wolverines: defensive tackle Michael Dwumfour, defensive back Lavert Hill and kicker Quinn Nordin. And yet, even with those losses fac- tored in, this was one of the more pro- ductive recruiting e=orts in recent Penn State history. In its three classes under Franklin, the Nittany Lions have now landed 23 four-star and 45 three-star players. Those totals compare favorably to the three seasons that preceded his arrival. From 2011-13 Penn State landed one ;ve-star prospect in quarterback Christian Hackenberg, nine four-star players and 27 three-star players. In the three seasons before that, from 2008- 10, Joe Paterno signed 23 four-star play- ers and 24 three-star players. Given the recruiting uptick, there's am- ple reason to believe that Penn State's depth chart will be signi;cantly improved as its highly regarded freshmen and soph- omores become juniors and seniors. But a big question remains: Is signi;cantly im- proved going to be good enough? The recently concluded recruiting cy- cle gave the Nittany Lions a very clear indication of what they're up against as There were a lot of kids decommit- ting and $ipping to and from other schools. How stressful is that on a coaching sta%? How di&cult does it make it, and how do you feel you've come out of that $urry of action? If you take everything into considera- tion, I think we did really well. We hired a new o=ensive line coach. We didn't lose one o=ensive 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' con- vention on. So it's the way the industry is going. It's really not the way we do business. We've been pretty fortunate over our past ;ve 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 di=erent 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 direc- tion, because it's easy to look at things when everything is going smooth and easy. It's [a question of] how you handle adversity. 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? 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 ;ve years. I know you don't want to talk about that, but I'd love to talk about that. We had the No. 1 running back in the country committed to us. I'd like to talk about all the signi;cant positive things that are going on in our program. Penn State isn't yet a Top 25 team on the #eld, but for the past two seasons you've had top-15, top-20 classes in recruiting. And you've had guys who have picked Penn State over the likes of Ohio State and Alabama. Why do you think those guys have been so re- ceptive to Penn State and your sta%? And how close do you think Penn State is to cracking the Top 25 on the #eld? That's a great question. If you look at the programs across the country that are consistently successful, they have a ros- ter full of those guys. They have ;ve re- cruiting classes like that. Are there some exceptions to those rules? Yes. But not many. So I think [it has to do with the] combi- nation of our coaching sta= and this uni- versity and what it stands for and what it's all about, our history and our tradi- tions, the pride in this place, and our players. I think our players are probably our greatest asset. I've been to a lot of schools where you do a player panel on an uno>cial or o>cial visit, and if that recruit has been there ;ve times, it's the same ;ve guys up there. And I hear par- ents a?erwards talk about how every C O A C H S P E A K E X C E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S S I G N I N G D AY P R E S S E R T H E C L A S S O F 2 0 1 6

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