(OT) Penn State Football - James Franklin no longer

phillychuck 2026-01-11 13:10:05 UTC #383

Watching the playoffs, it stuns me how close we were to beating the Hoosiers this season. They look like a juggerrnaut.

Squire 2026-01-11 15:02:02 UTC #384

Kinda feels like the Transfer Portal Rankings should consider both Value Added and Value Lost.

zambonir 2026-01-11 15:28:40 UTC #385

A good point, but a slightly different metric. Of course you can't have 42 or 30 transfers if you're not also losing a bunch of them (and each of the Top 4 are teams that changed coaches), and the same can be true of recruiting (if you had a small class the previous year or lost an especially large senior class). You can just as easily capture that by ranking the entire roster, where Penn State obviously won't start in anyone's Top 20.

I think the Hoosiers just didn't take Penn State seriously, with good reason. And there was some home-field advantage. That they won was still a pretty clear demonstration of their talent and their mettle.

bigegypt0417 2026-01-12 14:21:30 UTC #386

This portal period is dizzying to say the least...it seems like players wait to see who is being added before they move.

One thing I've noticed so far is that the DL that are being added seem to be bigger than what i'm used to seeing at PSU.

I'm not sure what this team will look like except it will be Iowa State East in many positions.

It would be nice to see a few WR sign.

zambonir 2026-01-14 00:54:34 UTC #387

Since it came up (number per this article but not necessarily exact)....

PSU has lost 50 players

They've kept 33 players

They've added 35 (22 from ISU)

Since the portal opened, Penn State ranks third in 247Sports’ transfer portal rankings and is up to 49th in the site’s overall team rankings.

So I reckon that second number answers the question Squire raised

LoneStarPhan 2026-01-14 05:23:58 UTC #388

I read somewhere that there were 6200 football players in the portal. I do not have a link to verify.

zambonir 2026-01-14 15:19:02 UTC #389

It was around 4500 on Day 1 so I'm sure that's right. Or more. That's FCS too though so only an average of 23 per team and would include more than just the 105 scholarship players too.

Not all of them want to transfer either. In the old days a lot of these players were the ones that just lost their scholarships. Or they were stuck at one school forever regardless of playing time or whether their coach quit (or had to sit out a year, like Jeff Hostetler when he didn't beat out Blackledge). A very flawed system, but in different ways than the old one.

What I find remarkable is college athletes now have far more freedom than pro athletes. Which is part of why they aren't going to fix the chaos. But the schools are terrified of employee status/collective bargaining, and that would probably limit player movement and compensation too.

bigegypt0417 2026-01-14 16:52:53 UTC #390

On another note...Matt Rhule should be thanking Penn State for his new contract...

His recruiting class is ranked last in the Big 10 and 33rd in the transfer portal. He lost his QB and his back-up.

oof

zambonir 2026-01-14 17:50:04 UTC #391

Well, I'm sure he'll pay for the vacation house with Kraft this summer

bigegypt0417 2026-01-14 18:05:27 UTC #392

It's the least he can do!

zambonir 2026-01-22 00:49:10 UTC #393

ESPN has them #23. I think they'll have a decent season, between the fact that that the combination of Smith and Campbell should make it somewhat plug-and-play and the fact that the schedule is pretty marshmallow (no big non-conference game, no Ohio State, no Oregon, no Indiana, USC at home. and who knows what Michigan will be).

> A year ago in this column, I made the regrettable decision to rank Penn State No. 1 because it was bringing almost everyone back. A year later, that same program will have a new coach, Matt Campbell, and may start a transfer at most of the 22 positions.

> That’s how quickly programs can turn over in the portal/NIL era. Which makes it nearly impossible to predict whether the Nittany Lions will be a Top 25 team. (I’m leaving them out for now.)

bigegypt0417 2026-01-22 14:55:29 UTC #394

I like the pieces they added and the players they retained on offense.

They added some WR's with actual size and they added Becht who was one of the top QB's.

Things are looking up...they have now signed 15 kids for the 26 class and are back in play for the top guys who decommitted for 2027.