A boost to Penn State's football program

STATE COLLEGE - Penn State was able to overcome the odds last season and pull off an unexpected 8-4 season, but that was before the brunt of the NCAA's sanctions set in.

Those effects would have been felt when the Nittany Lions were playing with 20 fewer scholarship players than their competitors for a four-season period.

Not after Tuesday, however.

The NCAA announced it would reinstate the football team's scholarships on a gradual basis starting next season, and Penn State will have a allotment of scholarships by the 2016-17 campaign. It does nothing to change the makeup of the current team, but Scott Kennedy, director of scouting for Fox Sports Next, called it "new life" for Penn State's program.

"I thought Penn State would be irrelevant for a decade under the former sanctions," Kennedy said. "But 3 years down the road, Penn State should be not far off from full strength, best-case scenario."

The Lions, who are off to a 3-1 start, are restricted to 75 scholarships this season (though they began the season with fewer than 70 scholarship players), and those limitations were set to sink to 65 from next season until the end of the 2017-18 campaign. However, Penn State will be back up to 75 scholarships again next season, 80 the season afterward and be at the full 85 by 2016-17.

Coach Bill O'Brien said the extra scholarships certainly will help with numbers, as he has only been able to offer one player at a given position in a class. Brian Dohn, Scout.com's Northeast recruiting analyst, said by getting scholarships back, Penn State's second string will improve.

"Some guys don't have backups," Dohn said. "Now you can bring in credible bodies to fill those roles instead of using walk-ons. The drop-off from the ones to your twos shouldn't be that great, and that's the difference between football teams."

Penn State is off this weekend, so O'Brien likely already was planning to hit the road to recruit before the news broke. O'Brien said Tuesday that he and his staff would "digest everything" and then apply it to their new recruiting guidelines, but the coach did not disclose much to reporters.

"Even when we get that strategy in place I'm not going to talk about it publicly," O'Brien said. "Obviously, we're able to sign some more guys and be able to have a roster of 75 scholarship players next year, so things will change and we'll see how that goes."

Kennedy said he has been "thoroughly impressed" with how Penn State has recruited since the penalties were levied, while Dohn mentioned the program has missed out on some elite prospects in its area. On a national scale, Penn State's 2014 class (currently made up of 12 players) is 32nd in Scout.com's rankings.

Not every recruit pans out, and Dohn said the additional scholarships give O'Brien more players, but also better odds.

"It allows for more mistakes in recruiting, and mistakes are inevitable," Dohn said. "The best coaches miss one out of every two kids. So, if you're adding 10 scholarships to the overall allotment, it allows them to have more margin for error."

It's obvious that recruits would like to go to a place where they can win games, and Penn State's on-field success since last season has boosted O'Brien's sales pitch. Kennedy said in theory, the extra scholarships should equate to extra wins, which should result in better recruits.

"If [a recruit] is on the fence, saying, 'Hey, I like Penn State, I like the coaches, I like Happy Valley, but I also like this school, I think they're going to have a better chance to win,' " he said. "Well, all of a sudden, Penn State has just pulled even or maybe ahead."

O'Brien has to work around the fact Penn State still has 3 years remaining on its current postseason ban. The NCAA could potentially lift the ban at some point, which would change Penn State's recruiting path again. But, for right now, that's just speculation.

"When the sanctions hit, everybody was like, 'Oh, this is going to kill Penn State, blah, blah, blah,' " Dohn said. "You don't know that, nobody knows this stuff. You never know with recruiting."