Penn State has no kickers or punters on scholarship

Penn State may have its full complement of football scholarships back after the lifting of NCAA sanctions, but that doesn't mean James Franklin is nearly finished building up the roster that was limited by the scholarship limits of previous years.

As Franklin succinctly said Tuesday during his Center City stop of the Penn State coaches' caravan: "We're still out of whack at some positions."

Franklin said the Nittany Lions have "81 or 82" players on scholarship, just a few below the NCAA limit of 85. But right now, most of the scholarships belong to underclassmen; he said the Lions have just 11 scholarship seniors on their roster.

"I think it's probably going to take us three years to get back to having not only the numbers making more sense, but also how it's spread out," he said. "That's the other issue right now. We're still really young. If you look at the offensive line, a good portion of the scholarship players are redshirt freshmen or freshmen. So that's something that we're still going to have to work through."

Franklin said another area of concern is on special teams, noting that the Nittany Lions' kicker, punter and long snappers all are walk-ons.

"That's not the ideal situation," he said. "We don't have one scholarship invested in a specialist. Typically there's a handful - maybe five snappers, five kickers, five punters - in the country that get scholarships out of high school each year. By the time we got the job [January 2014], those guys were already gone.

"Then last year, we still thought we were down five scholarships and by the time we got those scholarships, those guys were gone again. So we're going to have to get that fixed."

Franklin said other areas that are lacking are at defensive tackle and quarterback, where Christian Hackenberg is backed up by redshirt freshman Trace McSorley and freshman Tommy Stevens.

"I'm a big believer you should have five quarterbacks on scholarship, at the very least four," he said. "We have three. I think that's another position kind of where it shows up."

After its Center City appearance, the Penn State coaches' caravan went to Langhorne, Franklin's hometown, for an evening reception. The event was held at the Sheraton Bucks County, which Franklin remembered for having a 21-and-under nightclub called "The Fizz."

"It was pretty good, man, pretty good," Franklin said with a smile. That's where I spent my high school days."

Franklin said it was cool to return home.

"It has not changed a whole lot, to be honest with you," he said. "I've still got a lot of friends and I have a very small family, so not a whole lot of family. My sister lives in my mom's house so that's kind of cool that the house is still in our family.

"It's not something you very often get to do, which is go back home. Either people never leave or they leave and don't come back home. So coming back home isn't something that happens very often. So it's good."

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