Penn State's football coaches thought they had made a recruiting breakthrough when they signed Derrick Williams and Justin King in 2004.
Williams, a wide-receiver prospect who played quarterback at Eleanor Roosevelt High in Greenbelt, Md., was the highest-rated player in his high school class.
King, a defensive back/return specialist/"athlete" from Gateway High near Pittsburgh, was comfortably within everybody's national top 20.
Penn State was a losing program at the time, having gone 7-16 in 2003-04, and Williams and King could have gone anywhere.
Coach Joe Paterno and his staff did sign blue-chip prospects over the next couple years — defensive lineman Jared Odrick, Maurice Evans and Aaron Maybin, tight end Andrew Quarless, quarterback Pat Devlin, and others — but there was no breakthrough.
"They didn't win a lot of recruiting battles over kids that a lot of the majors were zoning in on," Tom Lemming, recruiting analyst for CBS and College Sports TV, said Thursday.
Where it matters most, on the field, Penn State is thriving to say the least. The Nittany Lions are 9-0, ranked third in the country and in the middle of the battle for the national championship.
And they're doing it with a deep, athletic roster filled with guys that, well, not that many people wanted.
Williams, now a senior, is part of one of the country's best wide-receiver corps.
The other two starting wideouts are Deon Butler, a walk-on, and Jordan Norwood, whose only other serious interest came from Division I-AA schools William & Mary and Bucknell.
The year before Williams got to Happy Valley the Lions' best receiver, almost by default, was a true freshman, Mark Rubin.
Once the Williams-Butler-Norwood trio arrived, Rubin was buried on the depth chart. He's since emerged as a defensive back.
Rubin's the guy who stripped Ohio State QB Terrelle Pryor of the ball in the biggest play of last week's watershed win at Columbus.
Rubin, who beat Michael Phelps several times in age-group races, was a hotter recruit in swimming than football.
Stories like that dot the roster. When Penn State announced in 2005 that it had signed Ollie Ogbu, a DT from Staten Island who prepped at Milford (Conn.) Academy, the reaction of the recruiting world was mostly, "Who?"
The current starter at middle linebacker, Josh Hull, is a walk-on from nearby Penns Valley High. Redshirt freshman Drew Astorino, who's had impact this fall as a defensive back and on special teams, chose Penn State over Kent State.
DL Abe Koroma was a mid-level recruit from the Milton Hershey School. Tight end Mickey Shuler probably wouldn't be at Penn State if his dad hadn't starred there.
These aren't players who are merely good enough to make the team. They're contributing, and in many cases starting, on one of the best teams in the country.
Lemming rates college recruiting classes each year. The Williams/King year is the only one in recent memory when he ranked a Penn State class in the top 10 nationally, or higher than third in the Big Ten Conference.
"They've evaluated guys higher than anyone else did," Lemming said.
"And they've coached them up once they got them. You have to give them credit. They have a good staff."
"They have a nice mixture right now," said Bob Lichtelfels, a recruiting analyst who covers the Northeast and Middle Atlantic regions for Scouts.com.
"They have some guys who could have gone anywhere and others who dreamed of playing for Penn State.
"Those kind of kids, nine times out of 10, they'll work their butts off to be good."
Other programs — Lemming named Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky and Iowa — have had success lately with third-tier recruiting.
But none of those programs have Penn State's name recognition. JoePa and Co. appear to be taking lower-rated kids, at least to some extent, by choice.
"We recruit people we feel comfortable can come here and play and we can coach and we can win some games with," Paterno said.
"Whether we get the guys that everybody wants us to take, that's a lot of hooey."
Many big-time schools back away from players who attend prep schools after high school. But Ogbu and Daryll Clark, Penn State's starting quarterback, are prep-school products.
Penn State has nine players from New York, almost all from the New York City metro area, far from a high school football hotbed.
Redshirt freshman tailback Stephfon Green, for example, is from the Bronx, where high school football isn't much more popular than high school chess, and film on Green didn't circulate nationally until most schools had moved on.
Not Penn State.
"There's probably no more than 15-20 real players in the whole state of New York most years," Lichtenfels said.
"In the Bronx? One, maybe two, tops."
It should surprise no one that Paterno is not a big fan of the work of Lemming and Lichtenfels.
" 'Knowledgeable' is not exactly the adjective I would use for recruiting gurus," he said.
"It's all gimmicks. It's all for the fans.
"I've got nine coaches who have coached for hundreds years almost and I've looked at thousands of high school kids in my life, and if I would have somebody out in Florida or Chicago tell me who is a good high school football player, I ought to get fired."
The Penn State approach, Paterno and his staff claim, is less about 40-yard dash times and more about hanging around high schools, talking to coaches, and watching kids play.
Even if they're not playing football at the time. Norwood caught Paterno's eye as a star guard on State College High School's 2003 state championship basketball team.
"I'll take credit for taking Jordan Norwood," Paterno said in a September press conference.
"I'm serious about that. I saw him play basketball on television and the way he handled himself."
Tailback Evan Royster was as hot a prospect in lacrosse as football. Rich Ohrnberger, an offensive lineman, was also a lacrosse star.
Safety Anthony Scirrotto was a highly regarded baseball prospect.
"I like to go to games," Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Bradley said Friday.
Bradley has a near-legendary rep as a recruiter, but as Paterno's responsibilities have faded with age, Bradley has become in some ways an associate head coach.
That means he's been on the road less, although he was on a recruiting trip as he spoke.
"I miss it. I like watching 'em warm up before games. I like watching 'em play basketball.
"I don't care how many points they score, I'm looking for body language, how coachable they are, how they interact with their teammates.
"I like to go to the [high school] office and see how many times they've been tardy. I talk to people in the community.
"I talk to high school coaches. If you have three different coaches who've played against a kid tell you about that kid, I'm interested."
It goes without saying that Bradley is less interested in the consensus take on a kid. Which is how he landed, for example, a kid turned down by Division II Edinboro in the 1980s.
That would be Shane Conlan, all-American linebacker, leader of the 1986 national championship team and three-time NFL Pro Bowler.
"Coach [Paterno] always tells us, 'You pick your team. Don't let other people pick your team for you,' " Bradley said.
The irony is that now, with a 9-0 team and perhaps the country's most electric game-day atmosphere, Penn State is recruiting itself again.
Kevin Newsome, a 4-to-5-star spread-offense style QB from Virginia, backed out of a commitment to Michigan last month. He visited Penn State when the Lions flogged the Wolverines two weeks back.
They say he's fallen in love with the place.
Mike Gross is assistant sports editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
