Penn State Football: What Is Penn State’s Recruiting Footprint? A Visual Guide

Editor’s Note: This is the 26th in a series previewing Penn State football, part of the countdown to Saturday’s Blue-White Game by StateCollege.com and Onward State. Read the previous stories here.

The game Risk is a lot like recruiting. It takes years to play out, and you can’t become victorious until you’ve dominated an area with tactics, gambles, and an ongoing supply of resources.

While it’s true that James Franklin won’t be deploying armies of assistant coaches in tanks to the east coast, his plan to dominate the state and the region will feature a lot of strategy and resources. Already Franklin has put together the No.2 ranked recruiting class in the nation with 11 commits ready to sign on the dotted line for the 2015 cycle. The 2014 class, a hybrid of Franklin’s and Bill O’Brien’s work, is a strong haul in its own right.

All of this success has largely happened within the boarders of traditional recruiting areas for Penn State that have supplied the Nittany Lions for decades. Franklin and his staff his staff have certainly hit the area with more success than in recent years, but the area itself has not changed.

But what does Penn State’s recruiting area look like exactly? Sure, fans are aware that the surrounding states make up the large part of Penn State’s roster, but in college football’s arms race this hypothetical game of Risk is played on a map.

And this is what the map looks like.

Penn State’s 2014 class is shown as yellow stars. The 2015 class appears as red stars. All current players appear as blue dots. Freshman who have already enrolled at Penn State are still identified as 2014 recruits on the map.

Locations on the map represent the city that each Nittany Lion calls home not specific addresses (So no luck camping out for autographs). Scout.com’s listing for each future Nittany Lion were used to determine that location. Current Penn State player’s hometowns are listings from the most recently updated roster.