The 10 biggest ‘what ifs’ for Penn State Football recruiting

Penn State Football recruiting has had its fair share of wins and losses on the trail over the years that benefitted and hurt the product on the field.

Recruiting is a wild game.

Things don’t always work out the way you would like them to. On the flip side, sometimes a fanbase ends very happy that a coaching staff did what they did, whether that be offering a recruit late in the process, flipping a recruit from another team or deciding to pass on a recruit.

Penn State has dealt with plenty of crazy recruiting moments over the years, and especially during James Franklin’s tenure in Happy Valley.

Penn State recruiting has pulled off some remarkable flips over the years and made some wise choices when it came to offering prospects. They’ve also had some not so memorable moments that Nittany Lions fans would like to forget.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest “what ifs” for Penn State recruiting under James Franklin

10. What if Micah Parsons Reclassified/Was a Year Older?

Putting this one at No. 10 because it has less to do with decisions made by the staff or the recruit and more of a wild hypothetical.

Micah Parsons was the jewel of Penn State’s 2018 recruiting class. The 5-star defensive end moved to linebacker once he arrived at Penn State and showed glimpses of a super star as a true freshman. Those glimpses turned into unreal performances as a sophomore, before we were all robbed of Parsons’ junior season, one that likely would have been one for the record books.

Let’s for a minute though envision Parsons as a member of Penn State’s star-studded 2017 team. A team that finished 11-2 and lost those two games by a total of four points. Could Parsons have made a difference in those two games?

The Nittany Lions had a solid linebacker corps in 2017, so Parsons may have been able to stay at defensive end that year and be an elite pass rusher in obvious passing situations. One of Penn State’s better defensive ends, Ryan Buchholz, was injured in the game against Ohio State and Penn State’s pass rush suffered after that. Imagine if Parsons was there to take his place.

Now, this wasn’t really a realistic situation, but we’ve seen plenty of other high-profile recruits reclassify in the past, and in some cases, like Wisconsin’s Braelon Allen, it worked out well.

Of course, another hypothetical would be what would’ve happened if Ohio State never let Parsons meet Kirk Herbstreit while on a visit, but that’s less fun to think about.