2022 PSU offers board is starting to look like the recruiting "methodology" that Duzzy practices at Pitt. Just send out as many offers as possible and hope some blindly hit home.
What happened to the "build relationships" model that Franklin has hung his hat on since he got to PSU? Did it totally get destroyed by Covid?
I thought you followed recruiting more closely than that.
First, the only change is one that has been forced by COVID. PSU traditionally would establish relationships, but would wait until a prospect visited PSU (where they could verify size, interest, etc.) before they made a scholarship offer. With visits by prospects being shut down since February, and most prospects doing virtual schools last spring as well as many still going virtual or doing a hybrid model, the prospects were getting absolutely swamped by texts, phone calls, requests for Zoom sessions, etc. (They generally get swamped with communications, but this was above and beyond the norm.) Many prospects started limiting their communications to only schools that had offered them a 'ship. As a result, PSU attempts to build relationships online, over the phone, via Zoom, etc., but has had to make offers to quite a few prospects that they have never seen in-person.
PSU has tweaked this a bit, in that they created a virtual workout platform, where prospects workout on video, and upload the videos to PSU. This has helped PSU in some regards.
The only other change has been that with a number of new coaches added last offseason, PSU has taken advantage of relationships these new coaches have in regions that PSU did not, in general, recruit all that hard. That's not much of a change, in that PSU has been modifying areas they recruit throughout CJF's tenure each time there was a change in the coaching staff.
PSU still prioritizes which positions it needs to focus on, which areas it wants to focus on, and at each position which prospect(s) is at the top of their board, etc.