STATE COLLEGE — The words rankled feelings from the Steel City to Philadelphia to Baltimore. They started a rivalry in Piscataway. They floated over the border into Ohio, drawing jeers in Columbus, too.
They were confidently stated Jan. 11, 2014, just minutes after Penn State formally introduced James Franklin as its head football coach.
The brash, young Pennsylvania native called this his dream job, said he planned to return the Nittany Lions to the type of gridiron glory it had gotten used to for decades between the 1960s and 1990s, but hadn’t seen consistently enough for any fan’s liking in more than two decades.
He laid his plan out succinctly. He and his staff would recruit the best players around. They would pitch Penn State’s facilities and academics and fan base. And they would boldly shut out the likes of Pittsburgh and Temple, Maryland and Rutgers, and even Ohio State, from landing the best talent on their turf.
“Our recruiting philosophy?” Franklin insisted then. “We are going to dominate the state. We are going to dominate the region.”
Dominate might have been considered a strong word. But Wednesday, when Franklin introduced Penn State’s first recruiting class brought in entirely by his coaching staff, many found it an apt choice.
Buoyed by the fall of the consent decree with the NCAA and a renewed flow of scholarships, the Nittany Lions landed a consensus top-15 class in the nation on National Signing Day, led by 11 four-star prospects and the implementation of Franklin’s bold plan to bring the state’s top talent to Happy Valley.
Each major recruiting service ranked the Nittany Lions’ class second in the Big Ten behind national champion Ohio State. Rivals.com ranked Penn State No. 11 in the nation. Scout.com had the Nittany Lions at No. 12, while both ESPN Recruiting Nation and 247sports.com listed them at No. 14.
For a map of where all of Penn State’s recruits are from, and a capsule preview of each one, visit this site online https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zNH-MlO6E2Fk.ka7zJJmshcho
“We’ve had a great day,” Franklin said, “We’re really excited about how this whole thing played out.”
Franklin said the recruiting class provided the Nittany Lions with the three things it needs most in a recruiting class: big-time talent, solid fits with the team’s attitude, and players — like four-star offensive tackle Paris Palmer from Lackawanna College — who could contribute depth as soon as 2015.
It also provided the staff a chance to back up its brazen guarantee made more than a year ago.
Of players among the top 23 prospects in Pennsylvania as ranked by Rivals.com, Penn State extended offers to 13 of them. Eleven ended up signing Wednesday. That’s an 84.6-percent success rate.
Another part of dominating the state is out-recruiting the other big-time programs in the state. And as it stood, Penn State wound up landing 17 players who had scholarship offers from Pitt. Pitt got one player in its class — cornerback Jordan Whitehead, whom Rivals ranked as the state’s top prospect — who had a scholarship offer from Penn State. That means only one player — in Pennsylvania and the nation — who had a chance to go to both schools chose Pitt.
Penn State got signed letters of intent Wednesday from Rivals’ second- through fifth-ranked players in the state — RB Saquon Barkley, CB John Reid, OL Ryan Bates and DE Ryan Buchholz — and finished with seven of the top 10. Two prospects signed within the last week — TE Nick Bowers and DE Kevin Givens — had been longtime Pitt commitments.
Dating back to 2002, no class in Penn State history had more than 10 in-state signees. With the notable exception of Whitehead, whomever Franklin’s staff wanted, Franklin’s staff got.
That type of in-state success, they insisted, didn’t come without hard work, a plan and relationships that existed long before he took over the reins at Penn State.
“The first thing was to come in and make some really bold statements in your introductory press conference and not give yourself a choice,” Franklin said with a laugh. “More than anything, look at our staff.”
Franklin, defensive coordinator Bob Shoop, linebackers coach Brent Pry and cornerbacks coach Terry Smith are all Pennsylvania natives. Offensive line coach Herb Hand is from New York, and offensive coordinator John Donovan is a New Jersey native.
That, Franklin said, gave the staff plenty of inroads and connections with teachers, guidance counselors, principals and football coaches throughout the Mid-Atlantic states. Himself having attended a teachers college, East Stroudsburg University, Franklin pointed out most of his college friends are teachers or coaches in Pennsylvania.
A former high school athletic director, Smith admitted the coaching staff had to repave some of the paths leading from Pennsylvania high schools to Penn State. Last year, he pointed out, the Nittany Lions didn’t get one of the top 10 prospects in the state, a fact he admitted would have been unthinkable decades ago. So this time, members of the staff attended too many coaches clinics and in-school visitations and community events for Smith to count, all in an effort to remind high schools Pennsylvania is still important to Penn State.
In recent years, many wondered why Penn State didn’t take a more national recruiting approach, venturing into Florida and the Carolinas and other talent-rich states in the Southeast that have proven rich with talent. Smith, however, hinted the talent level in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states may have been a bit ignored once the Nittany Lions shifted that focus.
“It’s not that the football has gotten better,” said Smith, who doubles as Penn State’s defensive recruiting coordinator, “it’s that we haven’t gotten the best. We have had to leave the state to get the best. We just made it a point of emphasis to get the top kids, because if we do that, we don’t have to leave the region.
“The kids are here. We did a study of northeastern states, and there are tons of kids in this region that have gone on to play in the NFL. Those kids have to come to Penn State before they go to the NFL.”
No coaches would say, though, that this went as well as could be expected. Franklin said he was “upset” the Nittany Lions didn’t jump past Ohio State in the rankings, and while the success rate on prospects offered in Pennsylvania was high, it wasn’t high enough for the staff’s liking.
They’re hoping their lofty standards for dominating the state will be met, in due time.
“We always want to do better, and every kid we offer a scholarship to, we want to get,” said Andy Frank, Penn State’s director of player personnel. “Next year, that will be our goal. But we have to take it one at a time.”
Penn State also landed a top-five prospect out of Virginia, Maryland and Connecticut and got four of the top nine-ranked prospects in New Jersey.