Andy Frank, The Man Behind Penn State Recruiting
Andy Frank doesn’t recruit a single player. Doesn’t visit a single home or high school. Without Andy Frank, though, neither does James Franklin.
Frank, Penn State’s Director of Player Personnel, is Franklin’s go-to guy. You know the story of Franklin’s one day trip to Washington D.C., to California, everywhere in-between and back? Yeah, Franklin may still be in California, if Frank, who Franklin called a mastermind, wasn’t engineering the trip.
Franklin doesn’t get a top-25 recruiting class together in three weeks without the Princeton grad scheduling and planning. Frank doesn’t have a car, or even a permanent home in State College yet. He hasn’t had time. In fact, he doesn’t even know when he arrived to Penn State.
“I couldn’t even tell you,” he said. “I just got here as fast as I could; I don’t have a car here. I flew into town a couple weeks ago now and started putting things into place and hit the ground running. I go back tomorrow to get my car and drive my car back up here and hopefully find a place to live. It’s been a whirlwind.”
It’s no secret that Franklin and his staff were incredibly active since they got to Penn State, and it’s no secret that they have to be in order to succeed. Frank holds all of that together.
“I’m more of the organizer, I don’t do any of the recruiting myself,” Frank said. “We’ve got a great staff of coaches that are all very good recruiters, which makes my job a whole lot easier. I’m the logistics guy; I’m setting things up and trying to get these guys in the right places.”
It’s already clear he can do that and did it under a shortened time period. He also did it with having just Franklin as the only legitimate Penn State employee for the beginning of the recruiting period, before the rest of the staff was officially hired.
Besides having recruiters, Frank said you also need a plan when coordinating recruiting. He splits the country into recruiting areas.
You know that whole "dominate the state" thing? And how Franklin wants to dominate the country as well? Frank decides how and where they are going to dominate. It goes from breaking down recruiting beds and hot spots, to scheduling visits and even to scheduling flights.
Sometimes that doesn’t work out to benefit the comfort of his coaches, even his head coach.
“I texted [Frank] one night on the red eye flight where I was in a middle seat between two 300-pounders,” Franklin said. “I wasn’t happy about that. I texted him and said, ‘you won’t break me, I know you’re tryin’ to break me, you won’t break me.’”
That’s a product of Franklin’s plan, though. He wants to get to every recruit in every part of the world.
“We’re going to go wherever we have to go to find players,” the head coach said. “If that is Denmark, if that is Japan, wherever we have to go to find players we’re going to do it.”
Guess who’s getting Franklin and his staff to Denmark? Frank. Even if it means no first class treatment is involved.
Mike Esse is a junior majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email mje5164@gmail.com.
Photo Courtesy: (AP Photo/Centre Daily Times, Nabil K. Mark)
