Early signing period a natural evolution from Nastasi
Long before the NCAA created the new and revolutionary early signing period for football recruits, Penn State made history by accepting a verbal commitment from a high school player in the spring of his junior year.
Back in the early 1990s, recruits waited until their senior seasons had begun to announce their college plans. But Joe Nastasi, a gifted multisport athlete from Northern Bedford High School, about 70 miles southwest of Penn State, went public with his commitment on April 24, 1993, during the Blue-White Game. However, he actually made his verbal commitment to coach Joe Paterno about a month earlier during a coffee break at the Corner Room restaurant in State College. Nastasi would go on to become a frequent starter at wide receiver for three years and a four-year holder for place kicks. As the holder, he made more Nittany Lion history in the famous 1995 “Snow Bowl” with a late touchdown off a fake field goal that helped beat Michigan, 27-17.
Phil Grosz, publisher of Blue White Illustrated, is one of a small group of recruiting pioneers in the media, going back nearly four decades. “Nastasi was the first person I ever saw who publicly made a statement in the spring of his junior year that he wanted to commit,” Grosz said. “All the other guys who follow recruiting agree with me. They all talk about Nastasi being the guy who started the whole thing.”
There has been an exponential increase in early commitments nationwide in the past 25 years, and Nastasi is not pleased with how everything has changed since his historical pledge. “I think the early commitments are getting a little out of control,” he said. “It’s starting to steal the youths from some of the kids.”
How Nastasi’s early commitment happened is a story in itself. Paterno and his staff did not intentionally set out to break the unwritten rule that restricted commitments to seniors. They sort of stumbled into it, thanks to an offensive line coach who found an opportunity in the labyrinthine NCAA rule book.
“Back then, you weren’t allowed to recruit a kid until after [summer] camp,” said Fran Ganter, then the Penn State offensive coordinator and place-kicking coach. “You weren’t allowed to sit down and talk about Penn State. You had to wait until the campers were excused. So, once the dorms were closed and the campers were excused, we would have some of the prospects down at the football building. Joe [Paterno] didn’t participate in the camp but he would be waiting down there, and we would introduce the prospects and their family or their coach to Coach Paterno and get them started in the recruiting routine.”
Penn State certainly had the inside track on Nastasi. His father, Joe Nastasi Sr., the highly respected head coach at Northern Bedford, was one of the scholastic coaches hired to assist at the camps. Nastasi remembered going to the summer camp for the first time before his freshman year in 1990. “I came up that year because it was one of those situations where my dad was coming up and he said I should go and sign up,” Nastasi said. “I just came up to compete and see how I did. My school was so small that I didn’t have the chance to play in a lot of big state games where I could compare talent. So I had to get myself out there in camps where I could compare my skill sets against other guys. Penn State started showing some interest after that camp, and that’s how the recruiting process started. They showed more interest by following me in baseball and basketball.”
Nastasi recalls Ganter and defensive backs coach Jim Caldwell being involved, but it was the recruiting coordinator, Bill Kenney, who was the point man in getting Nastasi’s historic commitment. Kenney had coached Penn State’s offensive line for three years when Paterno reassigned him to the role of recruiting coordinator in 1992, a position he held until he returned to coaching offensive tackles and tight ends in 1996. Even as recruiting coordinator, Kenney was responsible for scouting players from certain geographic areas, and Northern Bedford had been part of his region since 1989.
“That’s why we knew Joe so well by the time he was going to be a junior,” said Kenney, who is now on the staff at Western Michigan. “In those days in recruiting, everybody went out on the road during the contact period after a player’s senior year and went into the homes and started making their official offers. A week or so after the signing date [Feb. 3, 1993], I went through the [NCAA] rule book. I walked into Joe Paterno’s office and said, ‘Coach, I can’t find anything in the rule book that precludes us from offering Joe Nastasi a scholarship before December [of his senior year].’ Joe looks at me over his glasses and says, ‘That’s just the way we do it. We offer in December.’ I said, ‘I realize that, Coach. Why not try to offer him sooner?’ He said, ‘Let me think about that. It’s highly unusual.’ A little later in the afternoon he called me and said, ‘Call [Nastasi’s] dad and bring him over this weekend on a visit. I’m not making any promises. I’ll just talk it over with him, but I’m not certain I’ll make an offer. Let me think about it.’”
That was on a Tuesday. The following Saturday morning, Kenney and both Nastasis sat down with Paterno in a Corner Room booth where Paterno was sipping coffee. Kenney remembers Paterno saying to young Nastasi, “You know, Joe, this guy right here wants me to make you an offer to Penn State. We don’t do that. That’s unusual. It’s not common practice to offer this early. But we know so much about you, Joe, I want to make you a firm offer to come to Penn State.’ Joe jumped up and grabbed Coach Paterno around the neck and said, ‘I’m coming to Penn State.’ He committed on the spot, and that got the ball rolling.”
Nastasi recalls the moment, if not the details of the conversation. “I thought it was later, right at the end of my basketball season and closer to spring ball, but I could be wrong,” he said. “I was so excited. It was a dream come true.”
The next day, Paterno walked into Kenney’s office and asked, “Do you have any more like that?” Kenney told him he would have a list on his desk in an hour. “The next time we had our recruiting meeting we had a pretty strong list, and that’s when we began making early offers,” Kenney recalled. “We did it for about two years before the rest of college football caught up with it. The nice thing is that when we went out in December as usual, we had practically our entire recruiting class committed.”
Ganter recalls a specific staff meeting after the third camp that Nastasi attended in the summer of 1992, prior to his junior season.
“That’s when we made up our minds we wanted him,” Ganter said. “I remember being in a staff meeting right after that camp. Joe [Paterno] said, ‘What are we waiting for? He’s a great kid. His dad’s a football coach. We all like him. We’ve seen him perform. What else are you guys looking for?’ ”
Nastasi played five positions on the Northern Bedford football team, including quarterback, scoring a total of 72 career all-purpose touchdowns and was selected Pennsylvania’s small-school Player of the Year by The Associated Press in his senior year. “He was an unbelievable athlete,” Ganter said. “He ran a 4.5 or better and could catch the football. I went to see him play basketball at one point and saw him score 52 points.”
Nastasi also was a standout on his school’s baseball team but had figured basketball would be his ticket to a major-college scholarship. “That was my best sport and I was less than 6-foot,” he said. However, the opportunity to play for Paterno and Penn State was irresistible. “I was always such a huge fan of Penn State [football] and I would come up to games when I was younger. And then when I began getting national attention from a lot of East Coast schools – West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest – it was just an easy decision for me to commit to Penn State, a premier program. Back then, there weren’t as many powerhouses as there are today. You probably had 10 schools that really dominated, and to be in that elite status [with Penn State] was such an honor for me.”
Penn State had marked him down as a wide receiver following those summer camps. By the third game of his redshirt sophomore year, he was lining up at flanker and for the next four years he was used as both a starter and spot recevier. He developed a reputation as someone who could be counted on in the clutch, but after 20 years his name cannot be found in the Penn State record book.
However, Nastasi may be best known as the holder on extra points and field goals, helping Brett Conway and Travis Forney rank among the top six career scorers in school history. His hands were his most valuable asset. He rarely dropped a pass or muffed a center’s snap on kicks. He made the play of his career as a holder on Nov. 18, 1995, against Michigan.
A surprise snow storm four days before the game dumped nearly 18 inches of snow on University Park. An armada of Penn State employees, volunteers paid $5 an hour, and inmates from the nearby state prison cleared the snow from the field, seats and walkways in time for the game to be played, but mounds of snow still surrounded the field when they kicked off in subfreezing temperatures.
Less than four minutes remained in the game with Penn State clinging to a 20-17 lead when Nastasi wrote himself into the Nittany Lions’ football history books. A 58-yard run by tailback Stephen Pitts had given Penn State a first down on the Michigan 8-yard line, but three plays gained only 6 yards, and Paterno sent Conway and Nastasi into the game. Conway had already booted field goals of 49 and 51 yards, and this was a chip shot for him. But even after the kick, Michigan could come back and win the game with a touchdown.
Moments earlier on the sideline, Ganter told Nastasi he had the go-ahead to run the fake field goal play they had practiced all week. “We were going to call it at an earlier point in the game, at about the 30-yard line,” Nastasi said, “but they jumped offside and gave us a first down.”
The fake depended on the way Michigan’s defense lined up. If the Lions didn’t see the formation they wanted, Nastasi would call off the fake with an audible and they would kick the field goal. “We had seen in the film that when they were going to try and block a field goal, they would overload the left side with two or three guys and one guy over the center so that they could shoot the gap,” Nastasi said. “It was there right away.”
Nastasi kneeled down and his eyes quickly surveyed the Michigan defense. He knew instantly what he had to do. He called out the signal, took the snap from center Keith Conlin and darted over right tackle virtually untouched for a touchdown. “I just picked the ball up and walked in,” he remembered. “This time it worked perfectly. No one touched me. That was the most famous play of my career and it was the easiest one of my career. Anyone could have done it.”
Conway kicked the extra point, and the Lions won, 27-17. After the game, Michigan coach Lloyd Carr admitted his defense was fooled. “It was a great call,” he said.
After graduating, Nastasi became a partner in the Sports Café Grille and the Links Pub and Cafe on West College Avenue until the owners closed the establishments in 2007. For the past eight years, he has been an investigator for Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry. In his spare time the past two football seasons, Natasi has also coached wide receivers for State College High School. He has remarried, and he and his wife, Aaliyah, have a family of four – sons Joe, 16, and Donte, 12, and daughters Takiyah, 19, and Maya, 11 – with another on the way.
Nastasi is taking a special interest in the athletics of his two sons. Joe is a sophomore who played linebacker for a State College team that reached the Pennsylvania 6A quarterfinals this year. “Joe did a great job,” Nastasi said. “He didn’t start but he played a significant time at linebacker and special teams. Donte is a natural athlete and different-size kid, so he is more of a running back and wide receiver. He is quicker and fearless and has good instincts.”
With two sons now in the recruiting pipeline, Nastasi has taken a closer look at the new early signing period and wave of early commitments. Perhaps surprisingly given his history, he believes early commitments have gotten out of hand.
“These kids are getting offered at such ridiculously early years and it’s stealing their high school career a little bit,” Nastasi said. “I think it changes their hunger and drive. When something’s always given to you, it’s tough to stay on edge and be really hungry. It’s partly because of all this social media stuff. A kid goes on there and says I have three offers and seven offers and 10 offers. They’ve created this environment, and it’s almost like this social media circus when those kids get those offers.
“I think they should have to complete their junior year. I think the summer going into their senior year is when a school should be able to officially make an offer. I understand verbal offers and verbal commitments, and they can be pulled before signing day. It doesn’t mean a whole lot unless a school pulls the offer for no reason. We are putting these kids in a position where it’s all about them as individuals rather than their high school, their team and their programs. I don’t mean to be overly critical. I understand it and the money involved. But it seems more like such a business now. I would like to see it more old school. Think about it: My offer was considered so early, and it was only at the end of my junior year. It was unheard of. It wasn’t because I was this great player. It just worked out that way, which is totally different than how things are working now.”