New Lions RB coach to target Florida recruits
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ja’Juan Seider, at first blush, comes across as a guy whofears no challenge.
Good thing, too, because Seider looks to be facing a pretty significant one after joining the Penn State football coaching staff.
Not in his role as running backs coach — the Nittany Lions have a pretty fair collection of talent at the position — but as the Nittany Lions’ primary recruiter in SouthFlorida.
That means Seider, who joined Penn State after a stint at Florida, will have to try to convince teenagers from that part of the country that they should attend a college that occasionally can be shut down by a snowstorm, as happened Wednesday in UniversityPark, Pa.
Daunting as that task might sound to some, Seider, who was running backs coach at Marshall from 201012 and West Virginia from 2013-16, shrugged it off almost effortlessly.
“I left Florida to come up here,” said Seider, whose other recruiting territories will be around Erie and the Tidewater area in Virginia. “I think it’s a tradeoff.
“Most people use that for negative recruiting [against Northern schools]. … Kids adjust. Every kid wants to play in the NFL, so they get overthat weather part of it.
“It’s cold, but some people like dressing up with a sweatshirt on. The tradeoff is, when it’s real hot [in Florida], you get the nice, mild summersup here.”
Penn State has continually tried to expand its recruiting footprint since James Franklin replaced Bill O’Brien as coach in 2014, and adding Seider to the staff underscores the importance the Nittany Lions place on being able to lure some of the talent in Florida to central Pennsylvania.
“You don’t hire Ja’Juan unless you’re going to make a recruiting shift, and you don’t hire Ja’Juan and not recruit Florida,” Franklin said. “Itdoesn’t make any sense.
“We have recruited Florida in the past, but obviously, once you make this decision, you’re going to recruit it harder. He’s going to get us into some doors because of his relationships and his reputation that maybe we weren’tinvolved in before.”
Seider is a Florida native who coached high school football there, and the contacts he has established during his time in that state should serve Penn State well. Franklin believes that isn’t all the Nittany Lions have working in their favor, though.
“You combine us finishing in the top 10 the last two years with Ja’Juan’s relationships down there, and I think we can continue to make some progress,” he said. “We’ve been able to get a few kids, but I think this can change somethings.”
Franklin already had replaced running backs coach Charlie Huff, who followed former offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead to Mississippi State, with David Corley before Seider opted to leave the Gators, but shifted Corley to wide receivers coach — the role he had filled at Army before going to Penn State — so Seider could take over the runningbacks position.
“No different than we talk about with the players having position flexibility, we had hired David originally for the running backs job,” Franklin said. “But the fact that David had been a receivers coach for most of his career allowed us to hire Ja’Juan as running backs and move David to receivers.”
Seider’s recruiting talents will be tested quickly, because Penn State appears to believe that next year’s crop of prospects in Pennsylvania and surrounding states will be thinner than usual. That elevates the importance of luring quality players from otherparts of the country.
“We haven’t offered as many players in our state this year,” Franklin said. “If you look, it hasn’t been as many offers go out in our state, not just from Penn State but just from [schools] aroundthe country.
“There are going to be yearswhere the state is really strong, and you’re going to be able to sign 12, 15 players from a state, and there are going to be years where you signthree or four or five.
“You have to be able to broaden your nets so that you’re able to handle that. You’re able to overcome what may be a down year in the state or a down year in theregion.
“Fortunately for us, the region typically is going to be strong. There’s going to be enough to do what we need to do, but one year, one state may be down and another year another state may be strong.
“Year in and year out, our base and our bread and butter is going to come from this region, but we’re going to have to be able to complement that a little bit nationally.”