STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- In all likelihood these final two home games in Beaver Stadium will be the last time Saquon Barkley runs out of the tunnel at home wearing a Penn State jersey and finds some way to dazzle the crowd.
The junior and projected first-round NFL draft pick helped bring Penn State football back to this point, a place where the Nittany Lions are No. 14 in the College Football Playoff rankings and the do-it-all back remains in the conversation for the Heisman Trophy. Undoubtedly it's been a collective effort to get Penn State back to this point after coaching changes, NCAA sanctions and bowl bans, but Saturday's homecoming game against Rutgers is also a reminder of how this chapter in Penn State's history books could've been different.
"We joke around about it," said Penn State senior wide receiver Saeed Blacknall, a New Jersey native who like Barkley was once a Rutgers verbal pledge. Blacknall flipped his commitment to Penn State about one week before signing day and per 247Sports was the highest-ranked player in the Lions' 2014 class. "I told him it's 25 minutes from my front door so it would've been in my backyard and I joke around saying, 'You would've been right there with me in the Scarlet Knight red and everything.'"
Barkley of course was once a verbal pledge to Rutgers, the first school that offered him a scholarship. He was their diamond in the rough, the player then Rutgers head coach Kyle Flood skipped his own practice for so he could attend Barkley's high school workout. Flood wanted to make sure the kid who was born in New York and lived in Whitehall, Pa., about 70 miles from Piscatawy, N.J., was onboard and for a while Barkley was.
"The kid grew up a Jets fan. He was more New York, New Jersey than he was Pennsylvania," Scout analyst Brian Dohn told DKPittsburghSports.com earlier this season. "The other thing was Saquon wasn't hitting all these camps. He was committed to Rutgers I want to say going into his junior year. ... Then, going into senior year he was committed to Penn State. So, he was always committed. You're not going to go camping a bunch of places and then when you're committed to Penn State they don't want you to go camping places."
Barkley's dad has a New York Jets tattoo and the lure of playing close to the area he once called home even if he was too young to remember most of it, pleased Barkley. Breaking his verbal pledge to Flood and Rutgers, one he held for six months, was far from easy for the running back who prides himself on loyalty. At the time Barkley's coaches didn't think he'd be able to do it.
“He goes, ‘Coach, I never broke up with a girlfriend. How am I going to break up with Rutgers?” Barkley's middle school coach previously told DKPittsburghSports.com. “He felt bad. He wants to make people happy and doesn’t want to disappoint them. It really weighed on him. I didn’t think he was going to do it."
For Penn State, Barkley's pledge ended up being one that tipped the scales, giving the Lions a three-year starter who helped the team win a Big Ten title, make a Rose Bowl berth and get into national title conversations that Penn State hadn't been a part of for quite some time. He's the type of player that programs are built around, the one who even in Penn State's loaded running back class that featured four-star prized recruit Andre Robinson, Barkley ended up ahead of Robinson after a few short months on campus.
Without Barkley, and with struggles adapting to life in the Big Ten, Rutgers has gone 10-23 in the past two-plus seasons. They've switched coaches after Flood was fired in 2015 and Chris Ashe took the reigns in 2016 after a three-game stint by intern head coach Norries Wilson. Meanwhile, Penn State's record in that same span is 25-11 and 18-5 in the last season plus with offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead.
It's far from saying one player can make that much of a difference in the trajectories of both programs, but in the case of Barkley one has to wonder what would've happened to him had he donned that Rutgers jersey. Would he still be in talks for the Heisman Trophy? Would he have stayed after the coaching change?
It's a miss on the recruiting trail that likely will haunt Rutgers fans for a long time. He's not the only one who got away.
Keep in mind it was Blacknall, the Lions' wide receiver who cracked open the team's comeback in last year's Big Ten title game, playing the best football of his collegiate career to the tune of six catches for 155 yards and two touchdowns. It's been an up and down ride for Blacknall, who still has plenty of friends on the Rutgers sideline, including those who he shared a recruiting class with for five-plus months.
"Some of them didn’t like me,” Blacknall said regarding his changed commitment. “Obviously, a lot of them who I was friends with said, ‘You’re doing what’s best for you.’ But there is an edge they have."
Ultimately Blacknall and Barkley's college decisions came down to what they felt was a better fit and in hindsight Blacknall said he's certain he made the right choice. While he too didn't know who Barkley was before the back got to Penn State and Barkley was in the recruiting class one year behind Blacknall, the two can't help but wonder how their college experience would've gone had they not changed their pledges.
"[I] told him it's good thing we came here and everything because you look back and see how they turned out obviously. This was the best choice," Blacknall said. "But we always joke around saying what if we stayed?"
