Joel Klatt credits Penn State for keeping in-state talent

Penn State had the No. 14 ranked recruiting class in the national and No. 2 in the Big Ten conference according to On3’s 2023 Consensus Football Team Recruiting Rankings. They didn’t land any five-star recruits, but FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt believes they handled an important area of business in recruiting this offseason.

“Now to be fair, Penn State didn’t blow it out of the water with a top 10 class, or a top-five class, or beat Ohio State in recruiting,” Klatt said. “But they did do something, and they’ve continued a trend now for two straight years that was really lacking for them three years ago, four years ago. They’ve started to own their own state.”

The Nittany Lions signed six players from the state of Pennsylvania in their latest high school recruiting class, all of which are ranked in the top 15 players in the state. And Klatt believes this is particularly important in the new age of the transfer portal in college football.

“And I think that’s really imperative for any program, even if you’re not gonna have great players from your state, you’ve got to get the best players from your state. In particular in the era of the transfer portal because generally speaking those guys that are more local, they’re not gonna be the ones that are going to be heading out the door right away to go back home or to mercenaries,” Klatt explained.

Klatt added, “So they can be cores to your team, even if they’re not the best players on your team, they can be the core to your team, the nucleus of your team. And Penn State has done a much better job, much better job, over the last couple of years and certainly this year retaining the best players in their state.”

Klatt elaborated on how Penn State previously struggled in this area, failing to land any of the top 100 players in the nation from Pennsylvania in 2020 and 2021, losing on talents like Marvin Harrison Jr. and Kyle McCord to Ohio State. But they’ve changed that recently, landing the top player in the state in back-to-back seasons with Nick Singleton and Jven Williams amongst other top Pennsylvania prospects.

“So they’ve fixed that, they’ve gotten the top player in the state for back-to-back years and they’ve started to own their state. So I thought that was a positive from Penn State’s perspective,” Klatt said.