Here’s how much Penn State Football spent on recruiting– Did they get money’s worth?

Penn State Football, especially during James Franklin’s tenure as head coach have invested heavily in recruiting, but have the Nittany Lions got their money’s worth? 

Recruiting has become a large emphasis at Penn State Football since James Franklin’s arrival as head coach in 2014. With this emphasis, comes more spending, and that’s what Penn State has done recently.

Andy Wittry of AthleticDirectorU.com broke down how much each program spends on recruiting each fiscal year, and to no surprise, Penn State Football was towards the top. The year that Wittry’s analysis focuses on is the 2019 year.

According to Wittry, Penn State spent the eighth most money on recruiting among Power 5 programs during the 2019 fiscal year. The exact number of money spent by the school was $1,529,068, the most in the Big Ten conference.

What exactly that money is spent on is not detailed in the article, but some things that could be included would be the cost of official visits for a recruits, the cost of coaches traveling to recruit, the salaries of members of the recruiting department and the cost of gameday accommodations for recruits.

So, does spending on recruiting equal recruiting success? Sort of.

Georgia and Alabama are the top two schools in the country when it comes to spending. They currently hold the top two classes in the 2022 cycle and back in the 2020 cycle, the year this article focuses on, Georgia and Alabama were again the top two in the recruiting rankings.

Tennessee was third in spending in 2019 and had the No. 10 recruiting class in 2020. There are two major outliers as well. Arkansas was sixth in spending but had the No. 29 recruiting class. Meanwhile, Ohio State was 18th in spending and had the No. 5 class in 2020.

Pumping resources into recruiting certainly help, but winning can close the gap, or  losing can widen the gap. So, what about the Nittany Lions.

Penn State’s 2020 class ranked 15th nationally and was highlighted by 4-stars Curtis Jacobs and Theo Johnson. Going back to the 2019 class, which some of these resources were spent on, and Penn State had the No. 12 class in the country. A share was also focused on the 2021 class. That class finished 21st nationally.

So, if we’re trying to equate spending to recruiting success, then Penn State was below their expected recruiting rank, but not by much.

Now, Penn State has some recruiting disadvantages that they have to contend with. The university is in the middle of central Pennsylvania, and that life isn’t what every recruit is looking for. Moreover, the talent pool of in state recruits was not as strong from 2019-2021 as it had been in years past and now in 2022.

Penn State has likely increased spending since this report.

Franklin has been able to get the university to commit more money to football since 2019, with the board of trustees approving a $48.3 million upgrade to football facilities this past Winter.

That increase has started to net results, as the Nittany Lions currently have the No. 3 recruiting class in 2022 and the No. 5 class in 2023. Penn State will obviously need to win to keep recruiting at this rate, something they failed to do on Saturday.

Spending money will only get Penn State so far in recruiting, but it’s a good start.