The spring transfer portal window opened on Wednesday, and Penn State has already set in place a visit with a touted player in a position of need. Syracuse wide receiver Trebor Pena will visit the Nittany Lions on Friday, Matt Zenitz of 247Sports reported on Friday.
The 6-foot, 185-pound Pena earned second-team All-ACC honors after registering a team-high 84 receptions for 941 yards and nine touchdowns for the Orange this past season. He helped lead the offensive attack for a program that went from 6-7 to 10-3 in the first year under head coach Fran Brown.
Penn State has appeared poised to add another receiver in the spring window, even after signing Troy’s Devonte Ross and USC’s Kyron Hudson in the winter. Marques Hagans, the team’s wide receivers coach, told reporters on April 1 that he was open to the idea of bringing in another pass catcher to strengthen his unit.
“We could always use help. I think the objective is to be the best in the country at every position, and we’re working to become that. And until we become that, then, yes, we do need help at receiver,” Hagans said. “So, we just got to keep building the room the right way, bringing in the right guys, and then when the opportunity presents, we just got to perform at a high level.”
The call for James Franklin to add more talent at the position spans from an Orange Bowl loss to Notre Dame that saw quarterback Drew Allar fail to complete a single pass to a wide receiver. Following the defeat, the Nittany Lions’ top two receivers from the past year, Harrison Wallace III and Omari Evans, transferred away to Ole Miss and Washington.
Pena became one of the hottest names in the portal after he entered this week. His move, like many others, has generated conversation surrounding player compensation, a subject Brown said was at the core of Pena’s decision to depart. The number Brown floated around was $2 million, an amount he said he wasn’t comfortable giving any wide receiver.
“We paid him enough. He was going to get paid more. There were some numbers that were asked to me that I didn’t feel I would be able to do and move on,” Brown said in an interview with local radio station WTLA-AM on Wednesday. “I treated him right, did everything that was needed, and I just said, ‘Yo, you got to go.’”
Perhaps the Nittany Lions, who opened the piggy bank to make defensive coordinator Jim Knowles the highest-paid assistant in the college football history this offseason, would be willing to spend on a key player like Pena. Penn State is set to carry national title aspirations into next season, and receiver remains the team’s most glaring question mark for a third straight year.
“I think the two transfer portal guys have come in here and increased the competition across the board for different reasons and in different ways. … Nobody’s promised anything, but it’s raised the level of competition in the room,” Franklin said on Tuesday. “But we still need some of those guys that were already on the roster to take the next step, and we’ve seen flashes of that this spring.”
