Big Ten title, Rose Bowl berth continue paying dividends for Penn State

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – The excitement is obvious up and down Beaver and College Avenue as store-front windows are decked out with anything and everything blue and white while piles of Big Ten championship gear are being clearanced out.

It’s a new football season and soon the town’s population will include roughly 35,000 more residents as students flood back in a couple weeks while across campus James Franklin has his team working behind closed. Last year’s Big Ten title and trip to the Rose Bowl have impacted this program in many ways from the tangible to the intangible.

Season ticket sales are up, way up in fact with Penn State announcing Wednesday it exhausted this year's allotment. With 9,000 new season ticket holders and more than 95 percent of last year’s renewing, it’s the first time since 2008 that Penn State sold out of season tickets. In 2008, Penn State had 93,500-plus season ticket holders.



What else happened in 2008? Well, that 2008 season was when Daryll Clark and Evan Royster helped lead Penn State to an 11-2 season and trip to the Rose Bowl, where they were dismantled by USC.

So, why would this year’s return off a Rose Bowl trip be any different for Penn State? The Lions are putting together one of the best recruiting classes in the country, and athletic director Sandy Barbour even acknowledged last week that Penn State’s marketing department had preliminary discussions about organizing some sort of Heisman Trophy campaign for Saquon Barkley and Trace McSorley. That too brings more recognition, prestige and a big bargaining chip when prospects are looking at Penn State.

“The benefit to having two quality young men who are mentioned to varying degrees from a Heisman standpoint is for them and their futures, but it’s also for Penn State,” she said. “And [it’s] for continuing the program from the standpoint of where we are in our success as well as future Penn State football student athletes. This is a place where you can come and have those opportunities.”

And, as evidenced by the 2018 20-member recruiting class as of Aug. 2, which is quite early to have that many verbal pledges and is ranked No. 3 in the nation per 247Sports, there are a lot of prospects who are onboard with what’s happening here.

“I’m not gonna sit here and act like winning the Big Ten championship and playing in the Rose Bowl that those things haven’t had an impact because they have,” Franklin said last week at Big Ten media days. “It probably has had a little impact regionally, but I think it’s had more of an impact nationally. There are kids that we’re in conversations with nationally that maybe we haven’t been in years past. When is the last time Penn State had two players committed from Texas and two players committed from Florida? That hasn’t really been our history.”

It also helps that Penn State’s roster currently includes players from Alabama, Georgia, Florida and California, areas that are out of the team’s usual recruiting footprint. Many of them were part of the transition of Vanderbilt verbal pledges to Penn State when Franklin and staff switched jobs. Still, the Lions will have three starters on defense who hail from Alabama (defensive tackle Parker Cothren, cornerback Christian Campbell and defensive end Torrence Brown).

Current players are some of the biggest recruiting tools on any team since they spend much of the official visit with the prospect and typically they are brutally honest when asked about the ins and outs of their program. Seeing a player from Alabama come to Penn State, enjoy his experience and compete for conference and national titles certainly doesn’t hurt Penn State’s chances of landing more players from there in the future.

With those 20 verbal pledges and room for about five more, plus packed stands, potentially a Heisman candidate or two also gives this staff a chance to be more selective with who rounds out that quickly filling 2018 class. Turning top talent away hasn’t been something Penn State’s been able to do in a long time. In fact, Franklin recalled his first couple recruiting classes here where the team was rebounding from NCAA sanctions and he was reaching on offensive linemen in hopes of filling a massive void and had to play linebackers as true freshmen because they had no other choice.

Franklin compared the selectivity his staff will face in recruiting to that of the university, where typically when any school wins a national title, appears in the Final Four or makes a big leap in athletics there is also a spike in university applicants. While Penn State’s figures for the incoming freshman class have yet to be made available – and last July the incoming class set a record with more than 130,000 applications and 18,000 paid acceptances – in all likelihood there could be a spike there too.

It’s a good problem for all involved.

“Literally, we’ve got guys on our board that if they called to commit today I don’t know that we could take at certain positions,” Franklin said. “Getting to a place and building a program now where we’re going to have to get used to turning down really good players is uncomfortable and painful to do because I remember a couple years ago where we were begging guys. Now, we want you but we just can’t take you. We’re just going to have to get comfortable with that. That’s going to be a different situation for us moving forward that we have a chance to become even more selective.”