August News and Notes

Welcome to the weekend everyone.  We are exactly 3 weeks away from the season opener against Central Florida in Dublin, Ireland!  James Franklin can complain about the trip all he wants, but I just want to see some football!  I don't even care that I'll have to wake up at 8:30am to see it.  Anyway, it's time to get caught up on everything Penn State football.

In case you didn't know, in addition to Penn State's new President, last month we got a new athletic director as well.  Sandy Barbour comes to us by way of Cal-Berkley, arguably the best public school in the country, yet Cal football and basketball players were only graduating at a 40% clip under her watch.  Now, I'm willing to give her a chance, but I do question how someone with such a checkered past could even be considered for the Penn State job.  Does she have some incredible skills that we don't know about yet, or is there cronyism afoot?  The people over at OnwardState have a good take on the subject.

On to lighter news... did you know that James Franklin is a great recruiter?  Well he continued doing work recently, and bolstered the 2016 class, by adding coveted 5-star DE Shane Simmons back on July 30th.  Simmons is the first 5-star player to commit to the Lions since Christian Hackenberg in the 2013 class.  But Franklin and company weren't done, as they turned back to the 2015 class by adding 4-star CB John Reid from Philadelphia.  Reid is rated the 2nd best player in PA, and now gives Penn State 7 of the top 10 in-state players.  Coach Franklin continues to back up his "Dominate the State" mantra, and appears to be taking his pick of the Keystone litter.

In uniform news, although numbers on the helmets were shot down a little while back, we still haven't heard officially whether or not the team will be sporting names on the backs of their jerseys again this year.  One thing we do know, however, is that Michigan plans to wear alternate "under the lights" uniforms for the their clash with the Nittany Lions in Ann Arbor on Oct 11th.  I don't know what kind of effect that will have exactly, but Penn State will look as classy as ever for the game in their traditional all white away uniforms.

And finally, we briefly move to the NFL.  It looks like former Linebacker U product Dan Connor is retiring from pro football and will serve as the new linebackers coach at West Chester University.  Congratulations Dan on this new stage in your life, I'm sure you'll be an excellent coach!  As for the other former Lions still in the NFL, many of them were in action this past week as preseason games got under way.  Here is a great recap of how some of them performed.

That's all for this week.  Football will be here before you know it!  Keep it here on the blog for what remains of 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!