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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 F E B . 1 P R E S S E R You talked about being involved with a bunch of these kids for multi- ple years. Ellis Brooks, talk about the logistics and how you were able to get all that done so quickly. It probably wasn't as quick as people think. We've been in steady contact with Ellis for a long time. He was very active in hitting me up on Twitter, di- rect message. I did the same thing. Coach [Brent] Pry. A lot of people say, How come you didn't keep offering guys? We don't normally do that. We don't offer a lot of players. Then once we get commitments and peo- ple tell us they're coming, why are you going to keep offering other players if you can't take their commitment? Maybe we're a little old school like that, but that's what we're comfortable doing. That's how we would want to be treated. As parents, that's how we would want to be treated as prospects. The guys who choose not to come here, we wish them nothing but suc- cess. But the guys we do have coming here, we're really, really excited about. Fortunately with Ellis, we were able to get in there and get in his home. He's a really, really sharp kid, sharp family, what I would characterize as a Penn State kid and a Penn State family. Obviously it helps that this was a school he was always fond of. There's a really cool picture I think they put out where you see him at Michael Robin- son's knee at Michael Robinson's grad- uation from here, him and his dad. There is Ellis down by his knee as a little kid looking up at this place. I think those things help. We felt like if we got him on campus that we would be able to make up some ground in a short period of time. But he had all kinds of people coming to his house. He had visited all over the coun- try, from the West Coast to the Deep South, everywhere in between. He had a lot of opportunities. When he came on the visit, his dad was awesome. We felt really good about Dad. Mom I was scared of. Mom got aBer me in a home visit pretty good. I survived it. We got her here on cam- pus. Then Dad went down- town to the bookstore and bought $300 worth of gear. Pretty good sign. He just has got really good parents. He has a really good family. Mom, as most moms do, she loves her baby, wants to make sure he's protected, in the right place. We were able to get a really good person from a really good family and a really good high school coach to jump onboard with us. The big man upstairs works in mysterious ways, and things happen for a reason. I hope it works out really, really well for both parties, most importantly the party that's coming here. Could you talk a little bit about the importance of the last three guys you got to finish out this class. Why was it important to get them onboard and what they bring to the table? Yeah, I think [it was important to] keep recruiting. Our staff was a lot like our season. We persevered, just kept battling. I know fans and people think the recruiting process should go smooth and perfect. I've been doing this 23 years. It never does. You just keep re- cruiting. You stay positive. You keep selling all the wonderful things we have here at Penn State. Even with some of the guys who you think were solid the whole time, there were ups and downs, twists and turns. That's just kind of how it is. I think our staff just stayed positive and perse- vered, kept pounding positive messages with guys. We were fortunate. We were fortunate to close. I do think Ellis was a great one to sign with us late in the process at a position in need. Obviously Jason Cabinda is going to be a tremendous mentor to him. There's one [defensive back Tariq Castro-Fields] we can't speak on yet. Corey Bolds, you talk about a huge pickup. We have a need at defensive tackle. We lost some guys to the transfer process. Corey Bolds is a guy we re- cruited really early on. Once his mom and him got on campus, it changed completely. We got some commitments. Corey stayed patient. We just kept talk- ing. I really got to know him really well from a great high school. Coach [Ricky] Rahne did a really good job. Coach [Sean] Spencer. We're jacked about having that guy. You talk about a big, physical, strong, athletic guy that's going to have a chance to come in and compete, we're really excited. Sean Clifford is a guy who was the first commitment of the class. That one's a big one. The last one's a big one. Every- F E B R U A R Y 2 , 2 0 1 7 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 10 Franklin talks to the media on Wednes- day after Penn State wrapped up its re- cruiting efforts for the Class of 2017. The 21-member class is rated 12th nationally by Rivals.com. Photo by Nate Bauer

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