Penn State Football: Why the next two months are so important

Penn State Football enters a critical two-month period that could decide the course of the 2023 recruiting class. 

Last summer, we saw Penn State Football turn the June visit period into a July filled with over a dozen 2022 recruiting class commitments.

A year later, James Franklin and his staff will look to replicate that success.

This Friday is the start of the four-week official visit window for the 2023 recruiting cycle. Over the course of these next four weeks, Penn State will host dozens of uncommitted targets for official visits.

Using last year as an indicator, we know that Penn State is among the best in the country when it comes to knocking it out of the park on official visits. Every single one of the commits Penn State landed last July took an official visit in June. This includes 5-star running back Nick Singleton, who also visited Notre Dame, Texas A&M and Alabama and 5-star defensive end Dani Dennis-Sutton, who visited Georgia and Alabama along with Penn State.

The Nittany Lions ended the 2022 cycle ranked sixth in the nation, and that stretch last summer was arguably the biggest reason why the class was so successful.

This summer’s recruiting period is arguably more critical than last year’s, but why?

The reason being that the Nittany Lions need to stack these top ten recruiting classes. Under Franklin, Penn State has had top ten recruiting classes multiple times, but never two in a row.

If Penn State wants to catch up to Ohio State, and now Michigan as well, they need to keep up when it comes to talent.

Recruiting success is usually measured by the number of blue-chip recruits (4- and 5-star recruits) a team lands each cycle. In 2022, Ohio State signed 19 blue-chip recruits, the Nittany Lions landed 16. Although still behind the Buckeyes, this was a step in the right direction.

The 2023 cycle is a bit of a different story so far. The Nittany Lions are ahead of the Buckeyes in the national rankings, but that’s because Penn State has more commits. Ohio State’s blue-chip ratio in the 2023 class is 80%, Penn State’s is only 33%.

These next two months will be the opportunity for Penn State to close that gap. Crushing the official visit period, like last year, should help them do that.

With the introduction of NIL, recruiting is not as easy as it was a year ago. This adds another element to official visits, because now the staff needs to show a recruit that they will have NIL opportunities at Penn State, along with the other pitches that are involved in an official visit.

The staff certainly has their work cut out for them over the next two months.

That work is necessary though if Penn State wants to load up on as much talent as possible and finally break through to the College Football Playoff. These next two months will help dictate if Penn State is a national contender in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026.

If Penn State is in the playoff at some point in the next five years, we will look back to the summers of 2021 and 2022 and the recruiting efforts of the staff as a big factor in the team’s success on the field.