Penn State Football Recruiting: What's Next for the Nittany Lions?

How does Penn State approach paying for recruits?

This is a complex question for Penn State, which has not been among the biggest spenders in college football recruiting. Revenue sharing will help, and Penn State Athletic Director Pat Kraft has promised resources in the "new world" of NIL.

While Penn State seeks to be competitive in compensating recruits, the program also places value elsewhere. Penn State spent considerably on retention after the 2024 season, committing funds to bring back players like Drew Allar, Nicholas Singleton, Kaytron Allen and Dani Dennis-Sutton. They didn't come cheaply. Neither did the trio of transfer portal receivers, even though Franklin said that Penn State did not enter an overheated market for Trebor Pena of Syracuse.

Though Penn State prioritized retention from a budget perspective, it did so from a philosophical standpoint as well. Franklin has used the words "transformational" and "transactional" repeatedly over the past year to describe how he seeks to maintain balance in what's becoming a cash game.

“The way the sport has changed from a transfer portal perspective and from an NIL perspective, I think there’s also young people and families that are making decisions based on a transactional experience rather than a transformational experience," Franklin said. "So for us, we’re one of a handful of programs that are still holding on to [wanting] it to be as transformational an experience as possible. I think that aligns with Penn State and what our values are and how we want this program to be run. That’s something that was always very important to me."

What's next for Penn State recruiting?

The show must go on, and Franklin still wants to have fun with it. After the twin-sting of Friday's commitments to Notre Dame, Penn State spent the weekend hosting its annual Lasch Bash, which is more party than pitch.

Penn State annually hosts a barbeque for committed players and future prospects primarily to get them on campus and have a good time. Penn State previously has held the Lasch Bash in late July, as the team returns for training camp, but this year's recruiting calendar changed that. The month of July is a dead period, which the coaches certainly will appreciate.

So what is the Lasch Bash? Here's how Franklin described it in 2022.

"[The Lasch Bash is] always the thing we’ve tried to look at as putting the finishing touches on the summer recruiting period," Franklin said then. "I wouldn't necessarily say the [current] class, because there's still some moving parts, but kind of the finishing touches on that. It's not really a recruiting day. It's time for them just to come and have fun. We don't really do presentations. It's just, come and enjoy yourself. But it's always kind of been looked at as a springboard into the next recruiting class."