Is Florida Fool’s Gold for Penn State Recruiting?

The Nittany Lions are landing commitments from the Sunshine State, but is the juice worth the squeeze?

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Another one bites the dust.

The timeless Queen lyric can describe any number of Penn State depth players who recently managed to slide through the closing “transfer portal window” just before it snapped shut, departing a Nittany Lions squad straining to conform to the NCAA’s (quasi-fictional) 85-scholarship roster limit.

Sadly, it also applies to yet another Florida native choosing to leave Happy Valley and seek his fortunes elsewhere: King Mack, a sophomore defensive back, who with due respect to State’s other portal entries, represents the biggest and most painful transfer casualty of the offseason so far. A former top-100 recruit in the class of 2023, Mack very much looked the part in limited snaps as a true freshman, and even with a crowded safety room heading into 2024, he figured to be a contributor this season and beyond.

The rumored Alabama target’s exit via the portal further fueled a developing narrative around Penn State’s recent recruiting “success” in Florida, that James Franklin and Co. can get kids from the talent-rich recruiting hotbed to campus, but they cannot keep them here. When you combine the physical distance, culture and climate shock, and persistent lure of well-heeled prestige programs closer to home with the unprecedented ease of player mobility, the odds of keeping a Florida transplant in Blue and White are distressingly low, or so the conventional wisdom goes.  As former all-Big Ten Penn State defensive lineman and current Hamburg Sea Devils assistant head coach Brandon Noble might put it, “The Florida kids don’t travel well.”

It all makes sense on its face, but does the perception of PSU’s spotty track record retaining Sunshine State talent match the reality? Well, yes and no.

James Franklin has signed 11 recruiting classes at Penn State including the recently-inked class of 2024, several of whom have already enrolled in school and appeared in their first Blue-White Game. Of the 254 scholarship athletes included in those classes, 17 played their final season of high school football in Florida. This is an important distinction, as significant names like K.J. Hamler, Noah Cain, and Kaytron Allen grew up elsewhere before finishing their careers at Floridian talent factory IMG Academy. For the purposes of recruiting classifications and this article, they are included among Penn State’s Florida commits, though some of the presumed mitigating factors for native Floridians, like culture fit and travel distance, may not apply as directly.

As you can see in the table below, six out of Franklin’s last seven classes have included multiple Florida recruits, and half of them have departed the program, representing all of his Florida-based defectors save one, QB Michael O’Connor (really a Bill O’Brien recruit and a Canadian native who was another IMG transfer).

On raw numbers alone, the picture isn’t great. Since 2018, you pull in 14 kids from Florida and seven of them eventually skip town. A more fulsome analysis muddies the water.

Among “regions” from which Penn State has signed at least 10 players in the James Franklin era, Florida actually ranks 3rd worst in player attrition behind New England (57%), and the Midwest (48%). Surprisingly, Penn State has had decent success keeping players from non-Florida southern states (places like Texas, Alabama, Georgia, etc.) in the program, highlighted by standouts like WR Parker Washington, CB Grant Haley and current pass catchers Trey Wallace and Omari Evans.

Among the Florida commits who stayed the course are fan-favorite impact players Amani Oruwariye and K.J. Hamler, both NFL draft picks. Jordan Miner, a Tampa native from the class of 2018, never saw the field due to a heart condition, but stayed and graduated from Penn State. Conversely, the list of those who sought greener pastures doesn’t exactly conjure images of greatness, at Penn State or anywhere else.

Perhaps most importantly, the jury remains out on a bevy of State’s young Floridians. The aforementioned IMG transplant Kaytron Allen boasts of the most star power among this group, but defensive tackle Zane Durant has been generating growing buzz since he stepped on campus, and corners Cam Miller and Elliot Washington will be counted on to replenish a depleted defensive backfield. All three are expected to be major contributors in 2024. Two other true freshman DBs will one day follow in their footsteps. How the careers of these young men play out will dramatically impact any assessment of Florida talent at Penn State.

Interestingly, the attrition rate for Franklin’s first eight recruiting classes averaged about 50%, with the classes of 2015 and 2020 seeing more than half of their original members transfer or otherwise leave the program (final tale of the tape for the classes of 2022-24 is TBD, but none have yet exceeded 9% losses). This is neither new nor unusual. Pick up a copy of “For the Glory: College Football Dreams and Realities Inside Paterno’s Program,” a classic that followed the fortunes of the 1988 class of Nittany Lions, and you will be reminded that the more things change, the more they stay the same. With a small sample size of 17 commits over 10 years, the casualty rate for Florida recruits aligns to the overall average.

So when it comes to investing time and budget into building the orange-groves-to-cow-pastures pipeline, is the juice worth the squeeze? Sorry for another cop out, but time will tell.

Early returns do indeed suggest that the challenges of retaining Florida-based talent may not justify the recruiting efforts at the expense of focusing more resources closer to home. On the other hand, few of the previous departures have thus far been missed (unfortunately, King Mack looks primed to defy this trend), and if the current crop of youngsters sticks around and makes an impact, it will argue for continued forays into the Sunshine State’s smorgasbord of football prowess.