Pennsylvania Football Recruiting History, 2000-2020

Tagged under: News, Recruiting

PFN Staff | March 26, 2020

Recruiting has come a really long way over the past 21 years. In 2000, the website Scout.com ranked the top high school recruits in Pennsylvania – well, at least the top four recruits in the state. Before that, die-hards need to subscribe to newsletters or (if you can believe it) call recruiting hotlines for the latest information. Today, you can find recruiting profiles for tons of players all the way through the class of 2024. I don’t follow recruiting closely because it has never really engaged me. However, there’s no denying the widespread popularity of following one’s favorite college program’s recruiting efforts or the importance the process can play for the athletes themselves.

What I wanted to do was find if there were any trends, notable statistics or other interesting facts in the world of recruiting as it pertains to Pennsylvania football players. The 2000 class is the first one that can be found in the 247Sports archives today and the 2020 class signed early last month. During that time period, 1,471 players have been included in the 247Sports rankings of top players in Pennsylvania. Of those, I’ve found at least eight chose to play another sport in college. That leaves us with 1,463 graduates of Pennsylvania high schools who signed letters-of-intent to play football following their senior year. A small handful of those players went to prep school and then reappeared in the rankings the following year, but this is a negligible amount.

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