Penn State Just Nuked Their Own Program For Nothing

Wednesday is National Signing Day, the first opportunity for top programs to cement their recruiting class and help build up their roster for 2026 and beyond. 

While the transfer portal has, to some extent, reduced the importance of high school recruiting, most top teams still use it as a building block, then bolster their existing roster with transfers. As usual, the top of the 2026 recruiting rankings are a who's who of big programs. The USC Trojans have the No. 1 class in the country, per On3 Rivals. 

Notre Dame is No. 2, Oregon is No. 3, Georgia is No. 4 and Alabama is No. 5. Who'd have ever guessed that those programs would be out in front on high school recruiting? 

One of the perennial top teams in recent years when it comes to pulling in big-name recruits is the Penn State Nittany Lions. Micah Parsons. Saquan Barkley. Miles Sanders. Penn State had the No. 6 class in 2022. Their 2018 recruiting class was No. 4 in ESPN's rankings, the highest in program history. Their 2019 class had the highest average star ranking of any Penn State group this century. 

What did all those classes and players have in common? Head coach James Franklin. The same James Franklin who Penn State fired after a disappointing midseason stretch, and was promptly hired, in season, by the Virginia Tech Hokies. The same James Franklin who Penn State has replaced with, well, as of Wednesday afternoon, absolutely nobody. 

Which is precisely who they've added in recruiting too.

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA - OCTOBER 05: Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin walks to the field with his players before the second half of a college football game against the UCLA Bruins on October 5, 2024 at Beaver Stadium in University Park, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Penn State Shoots Itself In The Foot On National Signing Day

There are 18 teams in the appropriately named Big Ten Conference. Obviously, there are recruiting powerhouses like Ohio State, USC, Oregon and Michigan. But there are also programs that have historically struggled to attract top talent. Places like Rutgers, Maryland, Northwestern and Minnesota.

Yet with most top recruits having signed the National Letter of Intent on Wednesday, the Penn State recruiting class, again, out of 18 Big Ten teams, ranks 18th. Behind Purdue. Behind 3-9 UCLA. Behind Northwestern, Rutgers, Wisconsin, and Maryland. 

Remember, USC has the No. 1 class in the country. Oregon is No. 3. Ohio State is No. 6. Michigan is No. 12. Penn State is quite literally unranked, because they have two players committed as part of the 2026 class. Two players. Just ahead of them in the recruiting rankings is Colgate. Not the toothpaste, the school.

Kennesaw State and Delaware smoked Penn State in recruiting rankings. It's a disaster. And it's their own fault.

Every coach Penn State has targeted to replace Franklin has turned them down, or, in the case of BYU's Kalani Sitake, had a cookie company CEO step in to increase their pay package. They went after Curt Cignetti. There were rumblings about Lincoln Riley. They tried Jeff Brohm. Nothing's worked. And thanks to the uncertainty, Penn State has no new high school players coming in for 2026. They have no coach, as the calendar turns to December. If you fire a well-established, highly successful coach with a lengthy track record, you better have a very buttoned-up plan as to what you want to do to replace him. Penn State either didn't, or didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to poach someone else. Which speaks to naivete and lack of awareness.

Franklin, meanwhile, has completely flipped Virginia Tech's recruiting class, to the point where the Hokies now rank 24th overall. And that, in a nutshell, is how you set your program back years unnecessarily. 

Was Franklin the best coach in the country? No, certainly not. He struggled to beat top teams, and the midseason collapse in 2025 was a disaster. But he was also 104-45, and made the College Football Playoff semifinal in 2024, a game in which they led 10-3 at halftime, and had the ball with a chance to kick a game-winning field goal. Before a Drew Allar interception set up the Irish to get a game-winning kick themselves. Less than a year later, he was fired.  

Penn State could recover from this disaster class, hire a good head coach and rebuild through the portal. But if they don't, if this search drags on, or if a new coach doesn't bring the excitement necessary to improve recruiting and roster building in a hurry, this could wind up being one of the great unforced errors in recent college football history. At least Virginia Tech has to feel extremely fortunate that they were able to get the coach they wanted.