Penn State Begins Facing Recruiting Woes at BetLM

Penn State Begins Facing Recruiting Woes

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Two prized Penn State recruits have already backed away from their ver­bal com­mit­ments and will go else­where, due to the Jerry San­dusky sex scan­dal hang­ing over the foot­ball pro­gram and the uncer­tainty over the Nit­tany Lions’ next head coach.

More decom­mits may be on the way.

Until the focus shifts to the future instead of the ugly recent past, national recruit­ing ana­lysts believe it will be dif­fi­cult for the Nit­tany Lions to turn things around.

“They’re going to need some­one to come in and re-invigorate the fans,” said Scott Kennedy, direc­tor of scout­ing for Scout.com. “In today’s soci­ety, I don’t think this is as program-killing as peo­ple have talked about. Not to min­i­mize what’s been going on there, but I just don’t think this is akin to a death penalty.

“How­ever, I do think in the short term it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

What was at one time con­sid­ered a solid class of prospects– pos­si­bly among the 10 best in the nation– has no choice but to pin its future on the reas­sur­ance of what is expected to be a lame-duck coach­ing staff. Mean­while other pro­grams are tak­ing advan­tage of the lin­ger­ing ques­tions sur­round­ing Penn State to spirit away players.

Five-star defen­sive tackle prospect Tommy Schutt from Glen Ellyn, Ill., announced on Mon­day he was tak­ing back his com­mit­ment to Penn State and now says he’s headed to Ohio State. Offen­sive line­man Joey O’Connor, of Wind­sor, Colo., also has reversed his think­ing and now says he will not go to Penn State. He’s still con­sid­er­ing his options.

One major rea­son for the defec­tions is the stigma of the charges that San­dusky, a for­mer Penn State assis­tant coach who retired in 1999 but still had an office at the school long after, allegedly abused young boys.

The San­dusky alle­ga­tions led to the fir­ing of coach Joe Paterno on Nov. 9, along with the depar­ture of other top ath­letic depart­ment offi­cials. Long­time defen­sive assis­tant Tom Bradley took over on an interim basis as the Nit­tany Lions went 9–3 and earned a spot in the Tick­etC­ity Bowl on Jan. 2 in Dal­las against Houston.

Those who watch recruit­ing closely say not hir­ing some­one sooner has cost Penn State.

“I thought they would hire a head coach by now,” said Mike Far­rell, national recruit­ing ana­lyst for Rivals.com. “The fact that they’re drag­ging their feet here is really giv­ing all of these recruits the time to say, ‘Well, geez, sign­ing day is com­ing up pretty soon. I’d bet­ter start check­ing out my sec­ond options.’ That’s why they’re start­ing to lose kids. I know this is an impor­tant deci­sion but the longer they go in decid­ing who the next per­son to take over at Penn State is, the worse this is going to get– and it’s got­ten pretty bad.”

With no new head coach yet– it’s unlikely that Bradley or other cur­rent staffers asso­ci­ated with the Paterno regime will be retained– there has been very lit­tle hope or opti­mism sur­round­ing the pro­gram. Penn State’s once glit­ter­ing brand name has been men­tioned promi­nently in a per­sis­tent drum­beat of court dates, appear­ances, inter­views and fur­ther allegations.

“The great­est enemy to Penn State right now is the lack of cer­tainty, the unknown that is loom­ing over this pro­gram,” ESPN national recruit­ing ana­lyst Tom Lug­in­bill said. “That’s hurt­ing recruit­ing for them far more than the sex scan­dal is. At the end of the day, prospects want to know who’s going to be in charge and who’s going to be coach­ing them, and the par­ents want to know who’s going to be car­ing for their child. There’s a lot more about the uncer­tainty of the sit­u­a­tion that is cre­at­ing prob­lems than any­thing else.”

On the recruit­ing trail, Penn State coaches are stick­ing with the themes they offered to recruits before Paterno was fired– to look at the entire school and to take into account the program’s his­tory of aca­d­e­mic suc­cess along with its tradition-rich his­tory. But the act is grow­ing tired.

Ear­lier this year, Ohio State was wracked by a tat­too scan­dal that led to the forced res­ig­na­tion of long­time coach Jim Tres­sel and mul­ti­ple sus­pen­sions and NCAA inves­ti­ga­tions. Now Ohio State has helped to shift the focus from a year of NCAA prob­lems by hir­ing new coach Urban Meyer, who won two national cham­pi­onships at Florida.

That gaudy hir­ing has helped the Buck­eyes put a fresh coat of paint on their bat­tered image and they are now con­sid­ered a recruit­ing des­ti­na­tion instead of one that was down and out.

“Before Penn State, Ohio State and Miami were the ones tak­ing the brunt of all the things and now no one talks about them because this scan­dal is fresh and it’s dif­fer­ent,” recruit­ing expert Tom Lem­ming of CBS Sports Net­work said. “I think a new staff comes in next year (at Penn State), with a fresh slate, and they could over­come it.

“But not this year. They’re dead in the water this year.”

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Fol­low Rusty Miller on Twit­ter: http://www.twitter.com/rustymillerap.

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• Knight Calls Paterno His ‘Hero,’ Blasts Media and Penn State Trustees
• At Penn State, the Good-Byes Begin
• Joe Paterno, Penn State Leg­end, Dead at 85
• O’Brien Report­edly Headed to Penn State

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