National Signing Day

Sorry for the late post.  Although I was not one of the people who lost power due to the snow/ice storm on Tuesday night, I was preoccupied and couldn't get around to posting until today.  Hopefully the below post makes up for it.

With that out of the way... WOW, what an exciting day yesterday was!  It is now official, Penn State's 2014 recruiting class is in the books!  On one hand, National Signing Day came with few surprises.  Lloyd Tubman did in fact decommit as expected and ended up at the University of Kentucky, in his home state.  This allowed the Lions to pick up Torrence Brown, just as I predicted.  On the other hand, the approach that James Franklin and his staff took towards National Signing Day could not have been more different than his two predecessors and was a big surprise, even shock, to many fans.  The "war room," as it came to be called, was absolutely electric from 6am all the way through to the 6pm Signature Event at the BJC.  There were balloons, flatscreens showing highlights from all the recruits, and even an omelet station for breakfast.  On hand were cheerleaders, the Nittany Lion, the Blue Band trumpets, equipment manager "Spider" Caldwell, former player Michael Mauti, and Coach Franklin's daughters.  Each got a turn to help announce the name of recruits, in the style of the NFL draft, as their letters of intent came in hot off the fax machine.  Unfortunately, I couldn't be there to see and document everything first hand.  However, thanks in large part to Franklin's open door policy with the media, plenty of other reporters were there.  So instead of boring you with my hackneyed regurgitation of what everybody else posted, I'm just going to leave these links here and you can peruse them at your leisure.  Enjoy the awesomeness that was National Signing Day!

Here's the official GoPSUSports NSD blog, featuring player bios and plenty of videos and pictures from throughout the day.

PennLive's Audrey Snyder had full access and provided all kinds of great material:
- James Franklin's NSD press conference (VIDEO)
- Michael Mauti and LaVar Arrington address the crowd at the Signature Event... and Mauti makes a bold prediction (VIDEO)
- A look back at past 3-star recruits, plus a NSD photo gallery
- The Signature Event, a photo gallery

As always, Onward State was also on hand to cover the action:
- James Franklin's "War Room"
- The sights and sounds of NSD (VIDEO)
- Meet the 2014 recruits! (VIDEOS)

Finally, ESPN sat down for a Q&A with James Franklin.

So what can we take away from National Signing Day 2014?  Well, the most notable observation had to be the never ending energy coming from Coach Franklin.  Sure, we already knew he had plenty of energy, but this was ridiculous!  He managed to handle all the formalities of National Signing Day, take care of his two adorable daughters, give media interviews to ESPN, CBS Sports, Big Ten Network, and others, and still had enough left in the tank to put on what looked like a fantastic show at the Signature Event.  Another thing I noticed was that, while Bill O'Brien made it very clear that he didn't put much stock in recruiting rankings and star rankings, James Franklin seems to fully embrace them.  In the press conference video above, he is visibly disappointed that Penn State had the 3rd best class in the Big Ten and vowed to change that very soon.  He was also disappointed in the lack of PA kids (only 3) in this class, and more specifically that Penn State did not land even 1 of the top 10 players from within the state.  Yet, this class is still ranked in the top 25 by every major recruiting service and that's with 5 fewer scholarships than every other school can give out!  Recruiting is a HUGE deal in college football these days.  Just look at Alabama, who pulled in the unanimous #1 ranked class for the past 3 years... while also winning 3 National Championships in 4 years.  If Franklin can continue to pull in "blue chip" recruits, especially as the sanctions come to an end, Penn State could very well be in the National Championship hunt in no time.  That's not hyperbole people, this guy is for real!

I hope you enjoyed National Signing Day as much as I did.  Keep checking back here on the blog throughout the offseason for all the latest news and notes about Penn State football.  Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @PSUOptimus, and as always, go State!