Barbour won’t ID main offender
the school has handled everything.
Tuesday morning, a reporter cited a Reading Eagle story when asking Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer whether they took part in so-called negative recruiting against Penn State.
“I know we have a lot of reporters here,” Dantonio said. “Everybody’s got a pen. But from my standpoint, I have not said anything negative about Penn State. And, hopefully, our coaches have not as well. So, I was surprised to read that. I don’t know what happens out there on the road completely. But it’s not our M.O. And that’s not how we do business.”
Meyer said he and his staff have “absolutely not” negatively recruited with Penn State.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that,” Meyer said. “I’ll address that with coach [James] Franklin if that is an issue. That’s a pretty strong allegation that I’ve not heard yet. So that’s not been presented to me until this moment. … We’ve got a great deal of respect for every school in our conference. And we don’t worry about that stuff. I’m glad you told me that. If that’s true, I’ll address that.”
A Penn State spokesman said Tuesday that Franklin never said conference rivals Ohio State, Michigan State and Michigan had been negatively recruiting. Franklin also responded to Fox Sports.
“All I said was that every kid that we’re recruiting is also being recruited by Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Notre Dame and that they don’t have the same challenges that we have now,” Franklin said Tuesday. “Then, in a separate quote, I mentioned that right now we’re [dealing] with negative recruiting. It was two separate quotes, though, over a 35-minute interview. … I never said that any of those schools are the ones doing the negative recruiting against us. They’re not. There is one other particular school, but I didn’t name who that was.”
Barbour did not answer questions regarding how many incidents of negative recruiting there have been, how many schools have taken part or if she or Franklin had reached out to the offending schools, instead saying Penn State will “handle it internally.”
And while negative recruiting does happen every day and everywhere, at some point, enough is enough.
“And I would hope, particularly within our own conference, that we would be honorable,” Barbour said. “But, you know, we’ll compete on the field.”