espn: “Inside the Penn State college football coaching search”

[mfb5053]

Cocksuckers?

Cork soakers

 

[G3624]

We'll know how the Kraft minefield does in about five years.

 

[Nittering Nabob]

I do not know who said the negative stuff about CBC.

I suspect he's on the PSU BOT.

 

[Lion84]

It was Todd Blackledge who made this happen. The reason why it's not public is because of the class of person both Todd, and Coach Campbell are. I think we will also learn, as time goes by, that there were only 4 schools that Coach Campbell would have left Iowa State for: Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State: We were incredibly lucky to have landed him. It was good fortune and fate that Ohio State was coming off a national championship, Notre Dame was coming off a championship game final, and Michigan was caught up in the fallout from a toxic athletic department and football program. Had Michigan been will to risk a recruiting class that they ended up keeping anyway, Campbell would probably be in Ann Arbor right now.

We walked into an outhouse and came out with a new suit of clothes.

So you know he would pick UM over PSU in this hypothetical?

 

[rigi19040]

Honestly, it’s a good read. A couple of interesting tidbits I learned.

1) Campbell and Sitake were both identified by Kraft as top targets. But, an “industry insider” early in the process told Kraft some things about Campbell that were not fair or right regarding how Campbell would not be able to handle recruiting high-profile players demanding a lot of money, or that he does not work the transfer portal well. That cooled Kraft on Campbell earlier in the process.

2) Once Franklin was fired, it was radio silence between the Penn State staff and the 2026 commits. Franklin is a great recruiter, but perhaps more than any other big program, recruiting revolved around Franklin and didn’t have the holistic recruiting structure within the program in place to keep the recruiting class on board like other schools were able to do. One parent said, “It's like they didn't have a recruiting department once he stepped away."

1. The industry insider might be right or wrong. Jury is still out.

2. Kraft, Smith and remaining staff dropped the ball. Radio science was incompetence.

 

[Nitt1300]

I'm happy with the result.

But Kraft is an idiot.

 

[Nittering Nabob]

I'm happy with the result.

But Kraft is an idiot.

@Ludd @LB99

Do you agree with nitt1300’s blunt assessment?

 

[stater02]

Someone needs to ask Terry and Kraft about the radio silence w/ the recruits. Too many resources in the program to not touch base with them. This seems unbelievable but this program always seems to make things harder in itself, so I guess it’s possible. Maybe Kraft assumed he would land his guy early and they’d bring their class with them? That’s the only logical explanation I can think of here…

 

[Ludd]

@Ludd @LB99

Do you agree with nitt1300’s blunt assessment?

He certainly hasn’t done anything to prove the assessment wrong at this point.

 

[Chumboshifko1]

@Ludd @LB99

Do you agree with nitt1300’s blunt assessment?

Ludd + 89 + 1218 + 69 = ignore.

 

[WestSideLion]

Someone needs to ask Terry and Kraft about the radio silence w/ the recruits. Too many resources in the program to not touch base with them. This seems unbelievable but this program always seems to make things harder in itself, so I guess it’s possible. Maybe Kraft assumed he would land his guy early and they’d bring their class with them? That’s the only logical explanation I can think of here…

The most interesting part of that was the report that Franklin designed the recruiting infrastructure to revolve around him. It’s telling and certainly jibes with a lot of the programmatic sloppiness we became accustomed to during his tenure.

I don’t know how much was incompetence, ego or a mix of both. But it’s telling that a program of PSU’s stature fell into this kind is 101-level problem vs programs like LSU and Florida.