Bob Lichtenfels has covered college football recruiting along the East Coast for nearly a decade for Scout.com. The former high school coach knows the major players in the region, particularly those in his native Pennsylvania.
So Lichtenfels understands as well as anyone how much the last few months shook up the recruiting scene in the Keystone State.
“There’s going to be a bunch of new guys in Pennsylvania next year,” he said.
Pitt, once again, has a new coach — former Wisconsin offensive coordinator Paul Chryst, who put the finishing touches on a 16-member recruiting class ranked nine spots ahead of Penn State in Scout.com’s rankings after his hire in December.
The Nittany Lions, of course, made their first head coaching change since the Lyndon Johnson administration. Joe Paterno won’t be calling recruits in Philadelphia or Harrisburg and Tom Bradley won’t be pacing the hallways of high schools across western Pennsylvania. Bill O’Brien, who recruited for three different ACC schools before joining the New England Patriots, now sets his sights on Big Ten country.
The biggest presence in the state right now, though, might be the coach who recently set up shop a little more than 300 miles to the west.
Urban Meyer wrapped up a class ranked in the nation’s top five by most recruiting analysts shortly after succeeding Jim Tressel and Luke Fickell at Ohio State. Among the cornerstones of that group was Noah Spence, a dynamic defensive end prospect from Harrisburg’s Bishop McDevitt High School.
Meyer will likely be Bill O’Brien's chief rival on the field because the Buckeyes are the closest thing the Nittany Lions have to a natural rival these days. First, though, he’ll be one of his most dangerous rivals on the recruiting trail.
“Urban’s a rock star in college football and Ohio State already had a lot to attract recruits,” said Steve Wiltfong, a national recruiting analyst for 247Sports. “Now you add in maybe the most popular and famous person in college football. Urban Meyer outworks a lot of head coaches in recruiting. A lot of coaches like to just be the closer. Meyer is right in the thick of it. He understands that college football doesn’t have to be a level playing field.”
To get the Nittany Lions back to national prominence on a consistent basis and to have them competing for Big Ten titles, O’Brien is going to have to get the best players from anywhere and everywhere. He’ll need to use Larry Johnson’s significant contacts around the DC beltway. He’ll look to Ted Roof, Stan Hixon and Mac McWhorter to help Penn State make inroads in the southeast and southwest, areas rarely probed by the previous coaching staff in recent years.
But first, he’ll have to lock down his own backyard, if for no other reason than to keep the likes of Ohio State and Michigan from getting Pennsylvania’s home-grown talent and using that against the Nittany Lions.
That’s why O'Brien has assigned an area of the state to each of his eight assistant coaches (the ninth coach, who will be added after the Super Bowl, will get an area as well) in addition to their various responsibilities around the nation.
Speaking with reporters on a conference call Wednesday, O’Brien said he was pleased with Penn State’s Class of 2012, which was a mix of prospects who committed to Paterno and those who committed after O’Brien came on in January. But long before the letters of intent came through the fax machine Wednesday, the Penn State staff had turned at least part of its attention to the Class of 2013.
“We’re going to change our system,” O’Brien said. “How we grade, evaluate players, what type of players we want. ... The other thing that’s important to me is that we get out in the spring and get the clinics, the high schools in May for the evaluation period. Get our staff out there, let the high school coaches meet our staff up and down the East Coast, but primarily in Pennsylvania, number one, then Ohio, New Jersey, New York, New England. Get out there and make sure that our staff is out there.”
They’ll have plenty of company.
Jeff Rice covers Penn State football for the Centre Daily Times. He can be reached at 231-4609 or jrice@centredaily.com.
