As we all know, how college football teams build rosters nowadays look a lot different than it did just a decade ago when James Franklin first arrived at Happy Valley. During the past few years, we've seen programs take various courses from Clemson being almost purely high school recruiting to a high school first approach with transfers to supplement that we see at a variety of schools from Ohio State to Kansas State, and then a transfer portal heavy approach that places like Florida State, LSU, and Texas Tech have gone with.
All of these methods have there various methods though many of the consistently elite programs tend towards the middle approach of a high school-first roster build with transfers to supplement. Look at Ohio State which was primarily built through high school recruiting and supplemented their roster with guys like Caleb Downs. Look at Georgia which takes smaller recruiting classes to fill gaps and consistently wins year in and year out.
Penn State was very similar, leaning heavily on their high school recruiting while using the transfer portal to supplement their roster, even seeing one player transfer to Alabama in King Mack and then transfer back to Happy Valley last offseason.
Unsurprisingly, Franklin plans to take a similar approach now as he shared.
