Penn State has more than dominated their old head coach's portal recruiting class this offseason.
The Penn State Nittany Lions program had a chance to reset their program this offseason by moving on from their longtime head coach, James Franklin.
Day by day, that decision continues to be the right one as the Penn State program is absolutely pointed in the right direction under new head coach Matt Campbell. Campbell immediately came in, reset the culture, hit the road recruiting, got the foundation relayed, and has rebuilt this program brick by brick.
Looking at nearly every metric, Penn State is better right now than it used to be. They have also killed the Virginia Tech Hokies in the transfer portal.
Campbell's portal efforts are lapping what Franklin is doing at Virginia Tech.
According to 247Sports, the Penn State portal has been very solid. They have nabbed nine four-star recruits with an average transfer portal score of 87.30. The Penn State transfer class ranks fourth in the country.
Meanwhile, for Virginia Tech, they definitely aren't struggling, but it isn't as good as what is happening in Happy Valley.
The Hokies have the 27th overall class with just three four-star recruits and an average score of 86.48.
For Campbell, the numbers are a touch inflated because of what he had access to with his connection to his former Iowa State players. When he announced the move from Iowa State to Penn State.
The Nittany Lions' 38 total commits are in the upper echelon of transfer portal commitments in the entire country. Oklahoma State leads the way with 55 portal additions, while LSU has 40, Colorado has 43, Auburn has 39, and so on.
According to 247Sports' rankings, there were only seven five-star transfers available in the portal this offseason, and three of those went to LSU, which has the top class in America.
The Nittany Lions didn't get any of the five-star prospects, but the nine four-stars is a relatively solid number, and it compares very well to everyone else in the country. LSU and Ole Miss have 14 and 12 fou-stars, respectively, but the Nittany Lions are solid with the nine that they have.
In today's day and age, this is how you have to build a roster. Recruit okay, but invest a lot in older transfers who can come in and make immediate impacts, especially when you are rebuilding a program from scratch.
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