After plenty of talk about James Franklin bringing a recruiting surge to Virginia Tech, that surge officially began Tuesday evening as the Hokies landed a commitment from four-star Messiah Mickens.
Mickens, the four-star recruit from Harrisburg, VA, is Virginia Tech’s ninth commit in the 2026 class and the first either current or former Penn State commit to end up with the Hokies. He is also the first running back commit in this class and the only commit from the state of Pennsylvania in this class as of now.
Mickens’ decision comes after he previously had a reported top three of Oklahoma, Ole Miss, and Indiana as of the middle of last week. However, James Franklin and the Hokies quickly made their move to get him on campus last weekend and lock down his commitment before anyone else could get involved.
While most aren’t surprised to see Franklin start landing his former Penn State commits, it’s still impressive to see him start pulling this off just eight days after his hiring was officially announced.
Mickens is a big-time talent who ran for almost 4,000 yards, had 62 rushing touchdowns, and averaged over eight yards per carry during his high school career. His offer list as it includes the likes of Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Indiana, Penn State, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan, Miami, Oregon, Notre Dame, USC, Texas A&M, Tennessee, and many more.
He joins a strong RB room that is poised to be led by a two-headed monster of Marcellous Hawkins and Jeff Overton Jr, both of whom have to proven to be high-level playmakers out of the backfield.
He also gives VT a much-needed boost to a 2026 recruiting class that has been looking quite rough with only eight commits and 247 Sports having VT ranked well outside the top 100. It also sounds like Mickens will be far from the only former or current Penn State commit to end up at Virginia Tech.
