Literally hilarious we can’t land any top kids outside of Iowa State. Apparently Pat Kraft lied about all this money we have
Are we losing the portal contest?
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Sure but anybody claiming 3* portal players are likely to be as good as 5* HS recruits isn't being realistic. The teams with the highest recruiting ranking tend to finish high in the final season rankings.
He’s not at Iowa St anymore. He doesn’t have to find raw gems now.
I agree about a 9 win season. We have a somewhat easier schedule and 4 or 5 highly rated transfers to complement returning players. My biggest concern is DT.
IMO the timing of Franklin's firing and last minute hiring of Campbell put PSU at a huge disadvantage to retain players or attract top portal players. Money helped but not enough.
Do you really think Indy will be able to keep that up?
Why wasn't ISU in the playoffs?
Rodney told Dr. Vinnie Boombatz he woke up, looked in the mirror and wanted to throw up. He asked the doctor what's wrong with him? Vinnie replied "I don't know but your eyesight is perfect".Are you really a Dr? Do you know Dr. Vinnie Boombah?
Colorado spent a fortune on Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders but 2 players weren't enough.
Why do you think next year is a rebuilding year?
Nobody is reloading with HS kids anymore. There really isn't a rebuilding year anywhere. Frankly, thats what losers will say in this current college football world. When you are bringing in a bunch of upperclassman. You are not rebuilding, you are trying to win now.
Thats why Becht is here and Grunk is gone. That screams win now.
Ill tell you why ISU wasn't in the playoffs, because we got all of thier high level starters except for two guys, and regarding the ones that are going to play for PSU its about 10 guys. If they had another 10 as good as the front line guys we got. They would have been in the playoffs. In our defensive front seven next year. There will likely only be one ISU player (Bacon) making a big contribution. Hard to win at a high level without those guys.
As for the second 10 or so we got from ISU. Have you ever heard the term "young depth". Some of them may pan out, many will say if they start to pan out they will leave in the portal. Who knows.
Dude I literally said Penn State can win the big next year possibly with the kids they’ve retained and some of the Iowa state kids they got. Where the hell is all the money? Because every damn kid we’re getting is from some reject school who isn’t rated that great. But but the potential yeah a couple might work out but most of them won’t. And yes I know rankings aren’t everything.
The reasonable expectation is that he and his staff are just going to apply the same evaluation process now to a higher tier of players who they will have access to. If they don’t, then that would be completely ridiculous and this staff probably won’t be here very long.
Some people are a bit slow and have issues dealing with change. They are stuck thinking like it's 1986 and all the same rules apply. There is RECRUITING and then there is the PORTAL. RECRUITING still requires bidding as well, but the PORTAL is literally a free agent market with people that have actually played or not at this level. This year we have a HUGE turnover on the roster due to a coaching change and the people that cannot think for themselves or objectively think this is the normal year for PSU in both recruiting (where we lost an entire class) and in the portal. These same mouth breathers tend to have issues thinking objectively while just walking and breathing on this planet, but pretend they are very smart while saying some very dumb things.....and they do it proudly. That is what you are dealing with.
Everyone on this site already understands 5 star HIGH SCHOOL recruits tend to be better more often than not. We also know they cost the most. When these dumb folks talk about ISU, they expect PSU to nab every 4-5 star out there in the portal and overpay for the guys that typically aren't starting or moving on for various reasons because of what the stars said beside their name in the portal.
So when a coach has players he knows can play, can get them at a reasonable $$$ number(6 being in the top 100 which we NEVER do in recruiting), and get a depleted roster back on the field due to the portal/graduation they think he is just not spending enough. It's hard to be on these sites anymore as people are idiots as no other school or coach is bidding on the best players....it's just that easy for PSU only and they should get every top player around all the time. Knowing how a player works or fits in a locker room shouldn't matter as Jim online needs to be moved by feeling good for 4 minutes with stars next to a kids name. I think they have dopamine patches now, maybe they can start handing them out for some of the PSU faithful.
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Iowa State wasn't in the playoffs because they were 5-4 in the Big 12. It had nothing to do with PSU getting their best players. That didn't even happen until the season was over.
PSU got five 4* players from ISU:
Becht QB
Sowell WR
Bacon LB
Brahmer TE
Neal S
Those 5 players will likely make a significant contribution for PSU. A couple of 3* kids will also help but the bottom line is that Iowa State was 5-4 in the Big 12 because their top 5 or 10 guys weren't enough to allow them to compete with teams like Texas Tech, BYU, and Utah.
Oregon, OSU, Alabama, Georgia, Miami, Texas, etc won't finish high in the final rankings?
That wasn't my point. The following are generalizations, but the information is out there and has been discussed. It's not my view. It's what I've read and listened to in the recent weeks. It's about a team's recruiting focus and results in 2025/2026. Oregon, OSU, Georgia, and Texas -- the teams you mentioned above -- are out of the playoffs. Miami and Indiana are in the final. Ole Miss and Oregon made it to the final four. There was information out there that Miami leaned more to the portal to build their team, as did Indiana and Ole Miss. Oregon balanced traditional high school recruiting and the portal. The others (OSU, Georgia and Texas relied more on traditional high school recruiting). The teams that leaned more towards recruiting 5 star POTENTIAL out of high school than the portal are now out of the playoffs, and teams that utilized the portal more for PROVEN COLLEGE PRODUCTION than recruiting high school potential are still in the playoffs. That was my point. I wasn't talking about finishing in the top ten. I was talking about which teams survived in the playoffs and which teams didn't, and the ongoing discussion about how to build a team today. Even with 30 million NIL money, there's not enough money to spend freely on 5 star high school potential that will likely sit on the bench as a freshman and may never develop. Teams need to build a 105 man scholarship roster for today, not tomorrow. 30 million NIL divided by 105 players is an average of $285,714 per player.
For every Poz 3 star performing like a 5 star, there are a hundred 3 stars that perform like 3 stars.
Indiana might have stood blue chip ratio on its head, but we will see if they're an outlier or a trend.
Miami's recruiting rankings:
2023 7th
2024 4th
2025 14th
They supplemented this by picking up Carson Beck.
PSU made a run last year on the strength of it's 2022 class that was ranked 6th (Carter, Singleton, Allar, Allen, DDS).
Nearly half of Miami's starters this year came from the portal, as per media reports I read.
Apparently so. This is the first I heard of them. They could be worth a shot. I saw where OSU just got two more of Alabama's best prospects ever, and of course we just have Iowa State's whole team from last year. Gonna need some patches.
I still want to see what happens in 2027 and kind of think 2026 was not meant to be all that great, which was going to be the case even if 2025 would have worked out OK.
They did before the transfer rules changed because no one could identify with certainty which 2 and 3 star kids would go on to outproduce their rating and compile enough of them to beat the teams getting 4 and 5 star talent. But now you can see who those outproducers are in years 1-3 of college at other schools and get them to transfer. Indiana is showing this by beating teams with much higher blue chip talent.
You're totally correct.
Curiously, transfer star ratings seem to be more stingy than high school star ratings. Transfers with ratings of 89 and 90, ranked around top 10 at their position, but still get a 3 star transfer ranking. Take James Peoples for example. He's graded at 90.76, number 11 transfer RB, number 131 overall transfer player, but 3 stars. Those number out of high school are 4 star numbers. I mustn't understand the rating system.
Not all, of course.
Of the relatively highly-regarded guys from ISU:
PSU got the Lion's share (pun intended):
Becht (QB) - a very "mid" veteran QB, but you gotta' take what you can (once you decided to clean out Grunk and the existing PSU QB room)
Brahmer (TE), and a mid in Burkle
Bacon (LB)
Neal (S)
Sowell (WR)
Cooper (DB) For some reason relatively highly regarded, but played all of 3 games ever at Corner - the three games before he was lost to season ending knee injury last year) He was a former All B12 selection - 3 years ago as a nickleback - when he had a fistful of interceptions.
Hansen (RB) and Elksiden (WR) and maybe a few others maybe a tier below.
Those that went elsewhere:
Jontez Williams to USC (their very highly rated CB - think he also missed time w injury, but a true CB)... and DB Tre Bell who went to Michigan State
Brendan Black - their best offensive lineman went to, IIRC, Nebraska
Abu Sama - either he or Hansen their top RB (depending on what style you prefer), went to Wisconsin
Maybe a couple others that could be deliberated about in either category.
I mentioned Carson Beck but he was only one of 9 four star pickups in the portal.
You forgot about the previous school next to the kid’s name. If it’s not Alabama or Texas or OSU or Oregon then we don’t want them. Who cares how good they are or how much they cost or if they would be a fit. Make me feel better mommy.
If you can figure anything out that’s going on in college athletics you are a much smarter person than I am.
Here is the biggest thing that people overlooking the ISU kids have.....in most years we are not replacing 40+ players (courtesy of sg who is still banned for some reason) in the portal. We lost an entire recruiting class, a ton to graduation, and a ton to the portal. This year and next will be used to steady the roster. You can't replace 40 or so players at 1 million a pop or more with the budget as it stands. It's as if some people are vastly delusional to what is going on. Last year PSU lost around 8 to the portal to show you the difference.
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Yeah, this was not good. I guess part of him taking this job was he had to do his players that he already had some favors. Sucks to start off, but soon enough he will have to move on to this not being ISU East. Kind of a shame, Grunk was thrown into the fire and improved a hell of a lot in just a few games.
Since Campbell and Grunk spoke how are you sure they didn't have $$ discussions? Just curious as I don't know but I imagine the topic did come up. PSU has lost 49 players to the portal, so explain to me how you intended to back fill them with only elite talent with a budge of 20-30 million? I'm all ears as apparently people think guys will take pay cuts to come to PSU or filling out a roster of 105 when you lost just about as much as anyone else is as simple as throwing money at it. Did you want him to not take 6 of the top 100 players in the portal from ISU and try to outbid everyone else with players he had no relationship with? 49 players left....not sure people are comprehending what occurred here. Did people forget what JF did with the Vandy players when he got hired and that was pre NIL and portal.
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I'm not sure at all. Speculating that it's the whole coach/QB relationship stuff and that Campbell wanted his guy for that role. I have no connections, no insider anything, just how the situation appears to be.
I think in the long run it'll be OK for Penn State, but this coming season could be a little rocky.
What happened in '05? Have you bought those Va Tech season tickets yet to watch BGJ lose to Miami, Clemson, UVA, FSU and UNC?
PSA had a good year in 05 and then a mediocre year in year 06. Kind of like PSU had a good year last year.
Do you still want Poz or should we have cleaned house after 04?
Did you book your championship tickets or are you lowering your expectations for a rebuild?