How one draft set the Stars up for now and the future
Front offices throughout the NHL are willing to invest what amounts to a miniature fortune on travel so their amateur scouting staffs can find the players they believe can help them have a brighter future.
And that’s not even including additional scouting costs such as salaries or the investment that comes with eventually trying to develop those draft picks into NHL players.
Every front office knows there’s an art to drafting and developing. But to draft and develop the type of players who could potentially become franchise cornerstones? That can be a painstaking process that might take several years to master, with the sobering realization it might never happen.
Now you’re starting to understand what made the 2017 NHL draft a defining moment for the Dallas Stars. They didn’t find just one franchise player. They found a franchise defenseman, a franchise goaltender and a franchise forward in one draft when they used their first three picks to select defenseman Miro Heiskanen, goaltender Jake Oettinger and wing Jason Robertson.
“We’re hoping we can get one or two guys in each draft that can just play for us and be serviceable and good players,” one NHL amateur scout who works for another team told ESPN. “They got a No. 1 defenseman who can run a power play, a starting goaltender and a top-six forward in one draft. Even if they didn’t get Oettinger and just got Heiskanen and Robertson, that’s still a rock-star draft. There is not a word to describe three guys of that caliber. It’s scary good.”
Building through the draft and developing that talent is how teams win in the NHL. The Tampa Bay Lightning used five drafts in the span of seven years to acquire cornerstones Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point and Andrei Vasilevskiy. The Colorado Avalanche used four drafts over seven years to select cornerstones Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar.
But there’s more to it. The Lightning still had to develop the talent they drafted and the undrafted free agents they procured to support what they had beyond their cornerstones. The Avs parlayed players who were once thought to be cornerstones in their long-term plans and traded them to eventually strengthen their core.
The end result: The Lightning and Avalanche combined to win the past three Stanley Cups and serve as a blueprint for others to emulate.
“When we got into the [flat salary] cap world, the parity world, if you make a mistake signing a free agent, you don’t get out of that,” Stars general manager Jim Nill said. “The best way to stay out of that? It’s the draft and developing young, homegrown players that can have success.”
In the 1990s, the Dallas Cowboys had their triplets in Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith, who led them to three Super Bowls. Could it be possible that 30 years later, the Stars have their own version of a title-winning trio who might help bring a Cup or two to Big D? They’ll look to take a step in that direction with the opportunity to wrap up their first-round series with the Minnesota Wild in Game 6 on Friday night.
What the Stars did in order to refine Heiskanen, Oettinger and Robertson to reach this stage of their respective careers was a gradual process. And while they each showed continual flashes of promise, this season provided even more confirmation.
Heiskanen was already a top-pairing defenseman who could play in every situation. This season he broke through to score a career-high 73 points, which more than doubled his point total from the 2021-22 season.
Oettinger went from sharing the net to becoming a full-time No. 1 starter who was in the top seven in games started, saves, save percentage, goals-against average and shutouts. Robertson, who came into this season with 125 career points, improved to 109 points and his second straight 40-goal season.
Beyond their success in the 2017 draft, the Stars have quietly created one of the stronger farm-to-table approaches in the NHL. Their current iteration started in 2015 with center Roope Hintz. It has since continued to include center Ty Dellandrea, defenseman Thomas Harley and center Wyatt Johnston, with prospects such as Mavrik Bourque and Logan Stankoven lined up to be next.
Exactly how did the Stars set themselves on such a strong course in such short order?
HOW THE STARS came away with a franchise-altering haul in 2017 actually can be traced to the 1990s and the Detroit Red Wings. Nill was hired at the start of the 1994-95 season by the Red Wings to serve as their director of player development before eventually becoming assistant GM.
A year later, the Red Wings hired Kitchener Rangers head coach/GM Joe McDonnell to be an amateur scouts before he was promoted to director of amateur scouting before the start of the 2003-04 season.
Nill was hired by the Stars before the 2013-14 season and he hired McDonnell to be Dallas’ director of amateur scouting.
Their time with the Red Wings was foundational for several reasons. At the time, the Red Wings were at the vanguard of scouting well before the salary cap made it en vogue. They had already established a pipeline in Europe in addition to North America. That helped them draft a collection of prospects who reached the NHL, such as Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Jiri Fischer, Niklas Kronwall, Jiri Hudler, Valteri Filppula, Jimmy Howard and Johan Franzen, among many others.
Nill said he was “very fortunate” to be with the Red Wings at that time because of what he learned from Scotty Bowman, Jim Devellano and Ken Holland about the intricacies of both building a team and winning with them. Nill said what resonated with him is how the Red Wings’ management was able to build a bridge of internal talent that allowed the franchise to win four Stanley Cups while transitioning from those teams led by Steve Yzerman and Lidstrom to the group headlined by Datsyuk and Zetterberg.
“They did a great job of drafting and were one of the first teams that went to Europe and into Russia,” Nill said of the Red Wings. “They had a couple drafts similar to what we had in 2017 when they drafted Lidstrom and [Sergei] Federov. They knocked it dead too.”
But there is something to be said about the parts Nill and McDonnell played from the time they joined the franchise.
“The stuff McDonnell and Nill did in Detroit when McDonnell was running the amateur draft speaks for itself,” one NHL amateur scouting director told ESPN. “I would think the fact he left Detroit with Jim Nill speaks highly of his dedication. Not that I want to speak for Jim Nill, but I imagine knowing Joe well and the success he’s had identifying talent speaks highly in the world of hockey.”
Both the amateur scouting director and amateur scout who were interviewed by ESPN provided a composite look at what has made the Stars successful with their drafts.
The amateur scout said McDonnell and one of his most trusted scouts, Mark Leach, who also spent several years in the Red Wings organization, are known for being easy to speak with. That, in turn, can create the sort of environment that allows their scouts to potentially feel confident in expressing their observations, the amateur scout said.
“I get the sense the guys who are good in those positions listen really well,” the amateur scout said. “As the leader of an amateur department, if you have high stress, high anxiety and feel the pressure of making a pick, that feeds down to other guys. You don’t want to do anything for your staff that will make them not want to share something or give their opinions that may go against what is being said.”
The amateur scouting director said there are teams that look to draft a certain type of player and that the Stars have a defined idea of what they want. The scouting director said the past few drafts have shown the Stars targeted skilled forwards with offensive upside in Bourque and Johnston, the first-round picks in 2020 and 2021. They’ve also shown that size is something they seek in their defensemen, which was evidenced by taking the 6-foot-3 Harley in 2019 along with their first-round pick last year, Lian Bichsel, who is 6-5.
“Depending upon their strategy, they seem to be able to find talent. Especially later in the first round or with those early second-round picks,” the scouting director said. “They are able to find very good players.”
That’s the context for how the Stars are able to identify talent. They have people who have done it for decades and have built a staff with eight amateur scouts, European scouting director Kari Takko and McDonnell.
AS FOR HOW it all came together for the Stars in 2017? Nill admits there was some luck involved.
The Stars finished with the seventh-worst record in the NHL and had a 5.8% chance of winning the lottery, a 6.1% chance of getting the second pick and a 6.4% chance of picking third.
Having such a poor record opened the door for them to trade Patrick Eaves to the Anaheim Ducks for a conditional second-round pick. The condition for the Stars to get a first-round pick was that Eaves play in at least half the Ducks’ playoff games through the first two rounds.
The Stars entered the 2017 draft with the No. 3 pick from the lottery, Eaves meeting the conditions to flip that second-round pick into another first-round pick (No. 26 overall), while also having a high second-round pick (No. 39).
“We were sitting there during the draft lottery and when you move up from that spot to No. 3, that changes your whole mindset,” Nill said. “You are picking high in the first round and then pretty high in the second round. We got lucky with the lottery. You’re looking at a whole different group.”
The expectation was that centers Nico Hischier and Nolan Patrick were going to be off the board when it came time for the Stars to pick third. Nill said Heiskanen was on the short list of three or four possibilities for the team to take when it was their turn. Heiskanen projected as a responsible two-way defenseman who could someday do everything required of a top-pairing option.
Nill said the Stars’ scouts watched Oettinger “all the time” when he played at the United States National Team Development Program. That gave the Stars confidence that Oettinger fit the archetype of a contemporary goaltender, an athletic puck-stopper who has size packaged in a 6-5 body. Plus, they knew they had to start thinking about the future with Ben Bishop getting older.
As for Robertson? Nill said they knew he had high-end offensive ability and the intelligence to go with that skill. But the question they kept coming back to was his skating and whether he could be a good enough skater in the NHL.
“Is he too weak and needs more strength? Is there a hitch? That’s where player development is so important,” Nill said. “In the end with Jason, we were looking for someone who could score and with the guys that were left, we were fortunate to get him. The next part after we drafted him was for him to work with our player development staff.”
HEISKANEN, OETTINGER AND ROBERTSON are also reminders of how developing the players comes with its own set of challenges.
Now the Stars’ director of player personnel, former NHL center Rich Peverley was the team’s director of player development for six seasons. Peverley explained that Heiskanen, Oettinger and Robertson are prime examples of how every player’s development path is different.
Peverley said Heiskanen, who debuted as a 19-year-old, actually could have played in the NHL at 18. But the front office wanted him to get an additional year of development and getting stronger and faster. They knew he was going to play in several international competitions either for the Finnish under-20 men’s national team or for the Finnish national team while logging heavy minutes for his club team, HIFK. It amounted to Heiskanen playing a combined 70-plus games for club and country.
The Stars knew Oettinger was close to being ready. He had the maturity and was physically ready to make the jump. But they wanted him to get more experience at a higher level while also spending time with coaches who could help hone his skills. That’s why they were patient in watching Oettinger spend three seasons at Boston University, where he compiled a 2.34 goals-against average and a .923 save percentage in more than 100 games.
Nill told ESPN this season that the pandemic significantly altered the Stars’ development plan for Oettinger. They wanted him to play more than 50 AHL games in 2019-20, but the changes brought on by COVID-19 meant the Stars used him as a third goalie in the bubble, which led to Oettinger becoming Dallas’ backup when Bishop got hurt.
“We were concerned. Are we getting ahead of course with him?” Nill said. “My job is to worry about today, tomorrow and 10 years down the road. … Was it better to have him come back and be a backup or have him play in the AHL?”
Robertson’s situation was also unique. As Nill said, the Stars wanted to address concerns about his skating. Peverley added that the team also worked with Robertson in developing an offseason training program and creating a nutrition plan.
“I think everyone has had a good hand in his development,” Peverley said. “He came from a different background in terms of a hockey background being from California. He didn’t know how to work out, how to train in the offseason and didn’t know how to follow the nutritional things we preached. That was something he bought in and was all-in because he wanted to play in the NHL.”
Robertson began the 2018-19 season with the OHL’s Kingston Frontenacs before he was traded to the Niagara IceDogs. Jody Hull, who was the IceDogs’ associate coach when the team acquired Robertson, described how Peverley and the Stars were inclusive rather than invasive when it came to Robertson’s development.
Hull, now an associate coach with the WHL’s Tri-City Americans, said the key to development is that the NHL team and the team prospects are playing for share a common goal: They work together to make the player better.
They created a plan to address Robertson’s skating. One way they did that was to improve Robertson’s conditioning, which Hull said can be a contributing factor toward improving skating.
“Rich was awesome,” Hull said of Peverley. “He was up front and we talked about what we thought were deficiencies and areas Jason needed to improve. At the end of the day, what Dallas wants to see are the same things that will benefit the Niagara IceDogs in the same way. It was a hand-in-hand relationship.”
Both the IceDogs and Stars saw growth from Robertson, with him scoring 25 goals and 79 points in 38 games for Niagara. Between the Frontenacs and IceDogs, Robertson scored 48 goals and 117 points in his final OHL season.
He spent one season in the AHL, where he finished with 25 goals and 47 assists in 60 games before he was called up to Dallas for the 2020-21 season.
Robertson finished second in voting for the Calder Trophy, the award for the NHL’s best rookie.
“You have to establish trust and there has to be honesty there,” Peverley said. “I am a firm believer and have always been taught this. You can’t go in and impose your systems and way of playing on a junior player. You have to go with what the coaching staff is teaching. It’s about establishing pro habits because they all want to see the player be successful as a pro. It’s speaking the same language as coaches and management. If you do that, the players will have no confusion.”
FIVE GAMES INTO their first-round series against the Wild, the contributions made by the Stars’ latest crop of homegrown talent has been there for all to witness.
Heiskanen is averaging more than 29 minutes and had four points in the Stars’ 7-3 win to tie the series at 1-1. Oettinger has a 2.19 GAA, a .925 save percentage and provided a 27-save shutout for a huge Game 5 win. Robertson has six points, including a goal and assist in Game 5, while averaging almost 20 minutes in ice time.
Hintz broke out for a hat trick in Game 2 to cap a four-point night and has 11 points in five games. Johnston has only one point, but he’s operating as a second-line center and Natural Stat Trick’s data shows he leads Stars forwards in 5-on-5 ice time. Dellandrea is receiving third-line minutes and leads Stars forwards in short-handed ice time. Harley, who played only six regular-season games, has been featured in all five playoff games and is serving as a third-pairing defenseman.
That’s seven homegrown players who are all 26 or younger having an impact in the playoffs. And when you include older players such as captain Jamie Benn, who was drafted by the club in 2007, and forward Joel Kiviranta, an undrafted free agent the Stars signed and developed in the AHL for a season, it gives them 12 homegrown players on their active roster.
“People will say, ‘We draft who we want,’ and I say that’s hogwash. They care. These teams do care,” the amateur scout said. “Not saying Dallas doesn’t but I get the sense they have guys they like and they pick those guys who fit into what they are doing in Dallas.”
Sports
‘Probably will be a Netflix documentary’: Inside the twists and turns of Penn State’s 58-day coaching search
EQUAL PARTS HAPPY and relieved, Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft sat at the interview table inside the media room at Beaver Stadium with new coach Matt Campbell to his right.
After 58 days, Penn State had completed its coaching search with a selection who was both exciting and sensible, someone who seemingly could have been sitting with Kraft a lot sooner.
Campbell, only 46 years old, had become Iowa State’s all-time coaching wins leader and elevated the ISU program to historic consistency. Plus, he needed no introduction to Penn State and its tradition, having spent much of his childhood following Nittany Lions football while visiting his grandparents in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania.
Campbell’s hiring drew instant praise. But everyone wondered the same thing: What took so long?
“We didn’t really have a timeline, I mean that,” Kraft said. “We were focused on finding the right person, and at all costs.”
He paused.
“There probably will be a Netflix documentary at some point.”
Penn State’s was the first top-tier coaching job to open during a cycle that included 15 Power 4 hirings, but, until the Sherrone Moore scandal broke at Michigan, it was the very last to be filled. The search lasted so long that James Franklin, the coach Penn State abruptly fired after 12-plus seasons and 104 wins, found his next job at Virginia Tech three full weeks before Campbell was introduced in State College.
The 58-day saga included tens of millions in contract extension money for potential external candidates, a recruiting class that in large part followed Franklin to Blacksburg, the leaking of a secret audio recording of Kraft airing grievances, and the CEO of Crumbl cookies taking an interest.
ESPN spoke with sources in and around the Penn State search to assess what happened behind the scenes and why two sides seemingly meant for one another took so long to come together.
PENN STATE’S DECISION to fire Franklin on Oct. 12 rattled the college football world. Only 277 days earlier, Franklin had coached Penn State in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Orange Bowl, which the Nittany Lions led midway through the fourth quarter before falling 27-24 to Notre Dame.
Quarterback Drew Allar and many of Penn State’s top players had returned. The team made significant investments in the roster and the coaching staff, where Franklin plucked defensive coordinator Jim Knowles from national champion Ohio State. Penn State debuted at No. 2 in the AP Top 25, its highest preseason ranking in 28 years. But the team looked sluggish in nonconference play against non-Power 4 opponents Nevada, Florida International and Villanova.
After a heartbreaking overtime loss to Oregon at home, losses to winless UCLA and unranked Northwestern followed.
“Things really progressed poorly this year,” a source familiar with the search said. “Didn’t feel like they were going to get better within this year, and then didn’t feel great about the future.”
Franklin went 4-21 at Penn State against AP top-10 opponents, including 1-18 against Big Ten teams in the top 10. At a news conference on the day after firing Franklin, Kraft made it clear that Penn State needed to start winning the biggest games more often, including the ones that would secure the school’s first national championship since 1986.
“Football is our backbone,” Kraft said. “We have invested at the highest level. With that comes high expectations. Ultimately, I believe a new leader can help us win a national championship, and now is the right time for this change.”
In a meeting between Kraft and a group of Penn State team leaders after the firing, the contents of which later leaked in the final days of the search, the fourth-year athletic director acknowledged the stakes he was staring down.
“If I don’t get this right, my career is over,” Kraft said. “Understand that: If I don’t hire the right person, my career is over. So it’s very serious to me. This isn’t, like, what people just think. You all are going to graduate and move on. If I don’t find the right person, in two years, they will fire my ass and I don’t get another AD job.
“‘How could you f— up Penn State?'” he added rhetorically.
Kraft entered a market that wasn’t overflowing with obtainable candidates. Although Penn State was the first top-tier program to fire its coach, Florida fired Billy Napier the following week and LSU capped off the month by dumping Brian Kelly. This created competition among the blue bloods for top coaches.
“They figured, ‘Hey, we’ll get a good one, even though the market sucks and everybody else is in,'” an industry source said. “I don’t think they anticipated Missouri, Vandy, Indiana, Nebraska, SMU — everybody ponied up to keep their coaches, and that they couldn’t get one of these guys. It was always going to be a bad market to hire a football coach this year.
“There’s just not that many out there that are movable, and there’s too many open jobs.”
Penn State led its own search but contracted a firm to help handle elements such as candidate communication and background checks.
The initial speculation around Penn State centered on two coaches: Nebraska’s Matt Rhule and Indiana’s Curt Cignetti. Rhule played at Penn State and grew up in State College. He and Kraft were close from their time together at Temple, where Kraft served as deputy athletic director and then AD during Rhule’s tenure as Owls head coach. Cignetti had no direct connection to Penn State but was born in Pittsburgh, later worked at Temple and Pitt, and secured his first head coaching job at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Barely 96 hours after Penn State fired Franklin, Cignetti and Indiana agreed to a new eight-year contract that would pay him $11.6 million annually. His would be the first of several new and enhanced contracts secured by coaches connected to the Penn State search.
Rhule’s deal arrived at the end of October, and by then Penn State’s focus had already shifted. Although Rhule was evaluated by Penn State, sources connected to Penn State said his candidacy became amplified more in the media than in reality.
Penn State entered the search intending to take some big swings, while recognizing that the chances of landing certain coaches weren’t high. Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman and Texas A&M’s Mike Elko all surfaced as potential candidates.
Of the three, Elko seemed like the most realistic. He grew up in New Jersey and played college ball at Penn, before beginning his coaching career in the Northeast.
“The whole time, we thought Elko was going to be the guy,” an SEC coach said. “Then he came off the board.”
Elko kept winning at Texas A&M, a program that, despite no CFP appearances or recent league titles, had the financial clout to ensure it wouldn’t lose a coach over money. By late October, Texas A&M was 8-0 and Elko seemed all but set for an enhanced contract to remain with the Aggies, which he received Nov. 15.
In early December, DeBoer denied having any interest or contact with Penn State about its vacancy.
Penn State “never spent a ton of time on those guys knowing their current situations,” a source with knowledge of the search said.
The school wanted head coaches whose success couldn’t be tied to one quarterback or a single stretch of success. Penn State prioritized those who had shown a sustained ability to recruit and develop talent.
The lengthy search sparked weeks of speculation, as the public focus drifted from DeBoer to Elko to Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea to Louisville’s Jeff Brohm and even to James Madison’s Bob Chesney, the Pennsylvania native in his very first FBS job.
The truth, according to sources familiar with the search, is that two coaches appeared high on Penn State’s wish list from early on: BYU’s Kalani Sitake and Campbell, the Iowa State coach. But initially, Penn State pursued only one.
AT FIRST BLUSH, Sitake and Campbell seem like an odd pairing as contenders for the same A-list job.
Sitake is from Tonga and played fullback at BYU. Other than the 2015 season at Oregon State, he had spent his entire coaching career in the state of Utah at three different programs.
Campbell also had deep roots in a single state, Ohio, where he grew up, finished college at Division III power Mount Union and spent the decade-plus of his coaching career, culminating with his first head coaching opportunity at Toledo. But he also had family in Pennsylvania and had spent most of his life in the same region as Penn State.
Both coaches had led major programs for a decade, and had proved an ability to win across multiple quarterbacks and recruiting classes. Both oversaw balanced teams, built around the line of scrimmage, and were known for outstanding player development. BYU and Iowa State typically don’t sign nationally celebrated recruiting classes, but the teams have combined for 23 NFL draft picks since 2021.
Sitake is one of the most popular coaches in the sport, and Penn State loved his character-driven approach. Although Sitake had no connection to Happy Valley, Penn State felt he could adapt and compile a staff featuring some trusted BYU aides and others with more links to the PSU program and region.
By the end of October and into November, Sitake became Penn State’s focus, while he continued to lead a BYU team in contention for the Big 12 title and a CFP berth. Penn State had conversations with candidates such as Georgia Tech coach Brent Key and Pat Fitzgerald, the longtime Northwestern coach looking to return to the sideline. The school also interviewed interim coach Terry Smith, an assistant throughout Franklin’s tenure and a former PSU player under Joe Paterno.
Smith quickly gained support from current and former players, especially as the team improved under his watch with three straight wins to end the regular season. He was a legitimate candidate, sources close to the search said, and went through the same process as others, but ultimately lacked the FBS head coaching experience Penn State desired.
By late November, the school was locked in on Sitake, whose name had, to that point, not been widely connected to the Penn State job. University president Neeli Bendapudi had involvement in the effort to bring Sitake to Penn State, sources familiar with the search said.
Campbell, meanwhile, had not gained much traction. Despite Penn State’s initial interest, the school had received “some intel that was not accurate” about the ISU coach, a source familiar with the search said. Essentially, Campbell was portrayed as a coach who would struggle with the magnitude of the Penn State job, especially the recruiting and roster-construction elements when targeting higher-profile players who would demand serious money.
An industry insider “basically bad-mouthed Matt, told Pat that he didn’t work the portal well,” said a source familiar with the search. “It dampened Pat’s interest. He got a bad read about Matt from that [person]. That’s why I think he steered in a different direction.”
As the regular season concluded, Sitake was seemingly in line to become the next Nittany Lions coach. The hope was that his name wouldn’t get out publicly, and an agreement could be consummated after the Big 12 championship game.
But Sitake’s name began to leak during the final weekend of the regular season. By Dec. 1, a Monday, reports labeled Sitake as the focus of Penn State’s drawn-out search. BYU’s financial machine, which had activated to obtain top basketball recruit AJ Dybantsa and others, quickly kicked into gear to keep Sitake at his alma mater.
Several prominent BYU donors stepped up, including Jason McGowan, CEO and co-founder of Crumbl, the national cookie bakery chain, who lives in Provo, Utah, near BYU’s stadium. McGowan posted on X, “Some people are not replaceable. Sounds like it is time for me to get off the sidelines and get to work.”
Within 24 hours, BYU announced a new, enhanced long-term contract for Sitake, designed to keep him in Provo for good and compete regularly for the CFP. Penn State seemingly was back to square one.
In an attempt to rub sugar in the wound, a BYU fan sent Kraft a box of Crumbl cookies through DoorDash, while Virginia Tech just happened to serve Crumbl cookies at its first signing day event under Franklin.
JACKSON FORD SIGNED his letter of intent around lunchtime Dec. 3. Then reality set in.
A four-star defensive end at Malvern Prep, a private school 25 miles west of Philadelphia, Ford grew up watching the Nittany Lions. When he sprouted into a Power 4 recruit, Penn State was among the earliest programs to offer. “Dream school — I always wanted to play there,” Ford said.
He committed to the Nittany Lions in June. And while Franklin’s October dismissal came as a surprise, Ford never wavered on his pledge to the program this fall. But, as Ford walked out of his signing ceremony inside the Malvern Prep gymnasium, a flurry of news washed over him.
For at least a few minutes, Ford was officially the last man standing in Penn State’s 2026 class.
“It was kind of nerve-racking,” he told ESPN. “Like, ‘Dang, it’s really just me.'”
As the coaching search dragged on in the weeks before the 2026 early signing period, a once-promising Nittany Lions recruiting class crumbled almost entirely.
Penn State held pledges from 25 recruits within the nation’s 17th-ranked recruiting class in the 2026 cycle at the time of Franklin’s Oct. 12 firing. Among that group were six members of the 2026 ESPN 300, including coveted in-state recruits Kevin Brown (No. 78 overall), Messiah Mickens (No. 141) and Matt Sieg (No. 162). Four-star quarterback Troy Huhn, a polished, pro-style passer from San Marcos, California, had been committed for more than a year.
By the end of the early signing period on Dec. 5, only Ford remained with the Nittany Lions.
Florida and LSU each retained and signed the majority of their 2026 commits earlier this month despite the respective October firings of coaches Billy Napier and Brian Kelly. At Penn State, where sources familiar with the program described a hushed, old-school approach to financials and a recruiting operation centered firmly on Franklin himself, the infrastructure, or a lack thereof, caved in.
In the immediate aftermath, multiple former Penn State commits told ESPN that members of the Penn State staff said their previously agreed revenue share contracts were “null and void,” at least until the Nittany Lions hired a new coach. Others stopped hearing from the program altogether.
“Once Franklin got fired, they stopped contacting us completely,” the parent of another Penn State decommit said. “It’s like they didn’t have a recruiting department once he stepped away.”
The Penn State job had been vacant for more than a month when Franklin landed at Virginia Tech on Nov. 17 and immediately began targeting his former Penn State commits. “I’m pretty sure he called all of us that night,” eventual Hokies signee Benjamin Eziuka said.
Over the next two weeks, Franklin landed pledges from 11 ex-Nittany Lions commits, including Huhn, Mickens and eight others who had been part of the program’s incoming class on Oct. 12.
Brown and Sieg — two of Pennsylvania’s top five prospects in 2026 — landed together at West Virginia. North Carolina poached four former Penn State pledges. All told, 24 members of the Nittany Lions’ incoming class found new homes across 11 schools during the 58 days between Franklin’s firing and Campbell’s hiring.
But, in the background of the program’s recruiting collapse, interim coach Terry Smith and quarterbacks coach Trace McSorley spent the first 48 hours of December working on a signing day surprise.
The pair of Nittany Lions assistants had kept in touch with four-star quarterback Peyton Falzone after he flipped his pledge from Penn State to Auburn in the summer. When Falzone left the Tigers’ 2026 class on Dec. 1 following the arrival of former South Florida coach Alex Golesh at Auburn, the Nittany Lions were prepared to pounce. Smith sealed his commitment over the phone on the eve of the early signing period. Falzone put pen to paper in a signing ceremony the next day.
Afterward, one of his first phone calls was to Ford. Penn State’s lonely pair of early signing period additions will room together when Falzone and Ford land on campus in January.
“We’re fired up to get up there early and just work our tails off,” Ford said. “We have a lot to prove.”
“WHY ISN’T PENN State calling us?”
This was a popular question among Iowa State staffers close to Campbell in November. As they watched coach after coach re-up with their current school, they were baffled that Kraft had still expressed zero interest in the three-time Big 12 Coach of the Year.
That angst never reached Campbell, whose standard operating procedure was to have zero discussion about other jobs until the end of the regular season.
He’d turned down plenty of big-time opportunities over his decade in Ames, often needing only one phone call with an athletic director to sniff out which jobs were bad fits. Given his Midwest roots as a native of Massillon, Ohio, Penn State was always on the short list alongside Ohio State, Notre Dame and Michigan as jobs that staffers believed he privately coveted if the opportunity ever arose.
“I think honestly this was always one of the four schools that he would really, really, really want to go to,” a source close to Campbell said. “It didn’t matter how he got to it — he was going to get to it.”
Extracting him from Iowa State still wasn’t going to be easy. For Campbell, there was an extremely high bar to clear if he was going to put his family, staff and players through one of these transitions. Campbell has said he has already made more money than he ever dreamed of in coaching.
“The hard thing for me ever wanting to leave Iowa State at times — and getting close but saying, you know what, it’s just not the right time — is I never wanted to be that coach that was going to jump from job to job,” Campbell said.
Winning him over required pitching strong alignment with university leadership and a shared vision. He loved what he’d constructed in Ames, a successful and sustainable program that did things the right way with player-led teams and staff continuity, winning with modest roster budgets and an internal culture strong enough to withstand the NIL era and achieve the most successful period in Iowa State history.
Iowa State is not an easy place to win — because of the donor base and a historical lack of success — and isn’t getting easier. Campbell often described the job as going up the rough side of the mountain. Yet the more college football has evolved, the more entrenched he became about staying where he is and, as he likes to say, “standing for something.”
He was offered the Detroit Lions job in January 2021, and sources close to him believed he planned to accept. Campbell slept on it and declined the next day.
He’d promised Cyclones quarterback Brock Purdy he’d be there all four years of his college career. So he stuck by his word. Everything ended up working out fine for the Lions. Dan Campbell joked at his introductory news conference that he’d told his agent, “Make sure they think I’m Matt Campbell.”
Since then, it has been tough to line up perfect timing with perfect destination. And it seemed like 2025 might not be the year, either. Soon after the big jobs started opening, the Cyclones endured a four-game losing streak that knocked them out of the Big 12 title race. They managed to rally back in November and pull off an 8-4 finish.
The morning after Sitake re-upped with BYU, an associate with ties to both Kraft and Campbell reached out to the Penn State AD and brought up Campbell. Kraft was pitched on why Campbell could succeed at PSU: a proven culture, a detailed and disciplined approach and natural regional ties.
“If I were you,” the associate told Kraft, “I would turn my attention to Campbell quickly.”
Kraft agreed and asked to connect with Campbell. The associate thought Penn State would be an ideal spot for the Campbells with their extended family less than three hours away in Ohio. Kraft also suspected what their response might be to Penn State belatedly reaching out.
“What the f— took you guys so long?”
Penn State had an explanation, of course — that it was told Campbell could struggle with certain elements of the Penn State job — but Kraft would need to relay it himself. Late that night, the AD spoke with Campbell over the phone, and came away convinced that Penn State finally had its guy.
“I was banging my head against the wall like, ‘Why did it take so long for us to find each other?'” Kraft said. “He was perfect, and we connected on so many levels. I woke my wife, Betsy, up and said, ‘Oh my god, he’s the guy.'”
Kraft needed to meet Campbell in person and cleared out his remaining schedule for the following day. Campbell had a full slate of end-of-season meetings scheduled with Iowa State players and wasn’t going to think about the job until he completed those. Kraft and others involved in Penn State’s search flew to Ames on Thursday night, Dec. 4, for their own in-person meeting with their new No. 1 target. The Penn State contingent arrived at Campbell’s home with a term sheet in hand, determined to get a deal done. Campbell was joined by several top aides, including general manager Derek Hoodjer and chief of staff Skip Brabenec, sources said.
Iowa State staffers were left in suspense for most of Friday and were nervous that, just like with the Detroit job, this could still somehow fall through. They received radio silence from Campbell while his representative negotiated an eight-year, $70.5 million deal. Finally, Campbell called a 6:30 p.m. staff meeting.
Campbell held a team meeting a half hour later and ended up talking with Iowa State players until 2 a.m. He describes that night as “one of the hardest moments of my life.” Team leaders assured their head coach they understood and supported his decision.
Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard was prepared for his coach’s expected departure and immediately hired Washington State coach Jimmy Rogers that same night as Campbell’s replacement. Pollard went with Rogers over promoting longtime Campbell protégé Taylor Mouser, which made for a cleaner split for both sides and the end of an era.
After a fast and furious 48-hour pursuit to close out the marathon search, Penn State had found its next head coach.
“We got the guy we want,” Kraft said. “We really got the guy, the guy who’s going to lead us to a national championship and bring us back to the best program in the country.”
South Carolina star edge rusher Dylan Stewart announced his return to the Gamecocks for his true junior season in 2026.
The All-SEC linebacker is expected to be among the country’s highest-paid players after signing his deal with South Carolina, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel.
Stewart has 56 tackles, 11 sacks and 6 forced fumbles in 24 career games with South Carolina. He was the No. 24 overall prospect in the 2024 class out of Washington, D.C., according to the ESPN 300.
The Stewart news follows Monday’s announcement that quarterback LaNorris Sellers will also be returning.
The Gamecocks finished 4-8 (1-7) last season.
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