Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/79325
Lauded lineman Donovan Smith prepares to make his PSU debut THINKING BIG H | NEW KID ON THE BLOCK Smith nearly played as a true freshman but was held out and now has four years of eligibility remaining. o hum. Just another routine preseason camp for the Penn State football team. Nothing to see here, really. Or so you might think after talking to Donovan Smith. Smith is the Nittany Lions' likely starter at left tackle. He's one of the team's rising stars, a 6-foot-5, 316- pounder who already has the look of a potential NFL player even though he's only a redshirt freshman. Given those attributes, Smith would seem like an obvious target of rival coaches now that all of Penn State's players are free to go elsewhere without having to sit out a year. But Smith downplays the attention he's gotten. He said in the wake of the NCAA's decision to penalize Penn State that he was contacted by "a couple of schools" that were looking to enquire about his availability. Only a couple? Seems hard to believe, what with coach- es all but parachuting into State College as soon as the word came down that Penn State was being hit with major sanctions. But regardless of how many people were after him, those efforts were in vain. "The first couple of days it was kind of tough," he admitted. "But after that, I went with my gut. And my gut said to stay here." Smith said his decision to remain at Penn State was predicated in part on suspicions about what he was hearing from those other coaches. "You've got to look at it from their standpoint," he said. "It's a business. Coaches are going to tell you that you'll come in and start, but that's not true; you've got to learn a whole playbook. You've got to think about it that way." John Beale