Penn State takes more national recruiting approach amid lengthy dead period
In recruiting, distance can mean everything. But for the last 13 months, its impact on the recruiting trail has waned.
Under ordinary circumstances, some players are unwilling to travel a certain distance to visit different schools. Some develop strong relationships with certain coaches because proximity allows that coach to be more present. Some simply lack familiarity with schools outside of their geographic footprint.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which has ground the hustle and bustle of college football recruiting to a halt since March 2020, has effectively taken distance out of the equation.
Since the NCAA imposed a dead period on March 13, 2020, a prospect has been permitted to have the same amount of in-person interaction with the coaching staff from a school two miles from his front door as he is with the coaches from a school 500 miles away — none.
Penn State adjusted its recruiting strategy to fit that reality, Penn State Director of Player Personnel Andy Frank said.
"We talked to a wider variety [of prospects], probably geographically, and even somewhat interest types of what they’re looking for in a school to kind of filter out who is the most interested in us," Frank told BWI. "Some of these kids that we’re going to have coming for either official visits or unofficial visits this summer might not have come a previous year, because we’ve been able to develop relationships with some people maybe that are further away."
One glance at the list of prospects scheduled to embark on official visits to Penn State when the recruiting dead period ends at the beginning of June shows the fruits of that labor.
Christian Driver and Julian Humphrey are from Texas. Jordan Allen is from Louisiana. Darrius Clemons is from Oregon. Damari Alston is from Georgia. Omarion Hampton is from North Carolina. There are also three prospects from Florida - Ryan Turner, Omar Graham Jr. and Wesley Bissainthe.
Overall, about one-third of the prospects who have confirmed their official visit plans to Penn State attend high schools outside the Northeast and the DMV, where the Nittany Lions tend to have the most recruiting success.
Before, the Nittany Lions would likely start their recruitment of players from these areas from a position of weakness relative to schools that are more local. Now the playing field has been leveled.
"In the past, the way the cycle would have worked, we would have reached out to them, we may have offered them," Frank said. "We would have corresponded with them, but they may have visited five or six or seven or eight other schools before they were able to make the long distance trip to us. So we may have been further behind in the recruiting process."
The initial conversations Penn State is having with these recruits hasn't necessarily changed, Frank said, but the depth that those chats reach has.
Virtually, the Nittany Lions were also able to make an earlier start with many long-distance recruits than they might have had the ability to previously.
That alone helped earn them a visit from Turner, a Florida cornerback who is set to make the trip to Happy Valley for the weekend of June 18.
"Penn State was my first offer," Turner said in March. "They've kept it real with me from the start, so it's like it's a no-brainer. I had to lock it in with them first."
Frank made it clear that Penn State's opportunistic approach to recruiting over the last year does not represent a shift in priority away from the areas that have helped Penn State achieve some of its recent success.
The Nittany Lions still want to recruit Pennsylvania and the surrounding region at the "very highest level."
"We’re always going to continually evaluate what we’re learning," Frank said. "My anticipation is we will see positive results from this. We will have to determine just how positive that is, and whether or not that benefit will remain when we get back to ‘normal,’ and then how much we’re going to do that.
"We just know that it’s going to be one of those scenarios where we’ve got to find the right kids nationally because they’ve got to be able to get here. Now the reliance on the technology, or the force to use it, and the learning experiences, I think we’ll be able to figure out who those kids are at the national level who do make sense, where in the past it was a bit harder to figure that out. I think now we’re able to figure it out better. I think we will continue this, but we will continually try to learn."
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