Hello and welcome to the Sea Hawkers podcast.

I'm your host, Brandon Schultz.

We are just days away from the NFL draft.

And with the depth of talent coming out of Penn State this year,

I wanted to welcome on former Penn State

coach Jay Paterno. Jay is an author, a coach, a college football expert, and with more than

two decades of coaching experience, including 17 years at Penn State with his father Joe,

Jay's latest book, Blitzed. The all-out Pressure of College Football's new era dives into the challenges facing college

football today, from big money and NIL deals to mental health struggles.

Jay, welcome to the show.

Good to be here.

Yeah, so as I mentioned off the top, Penn State, we've got quite the draft class coming out of your former school this year.

No question about it. I think, you know, and the disappointing thing is that the depth of talent that's coming out did not pan out on the field like it should have, but that doesn't lessen the guys coming out. Certainly, you've got

defensive line, you've got an offensive line, and you've got a quarterback, got a couple

of backs, you've got a safety. So there's a lot of talent across the board that's going to be

really interesting to see where they go.

You know, we've seen that over the years, though, where you see a lot of NFL talent come out of a school, and they just weren't able to quite put it together and have that success that you might expect.

What do you attribute that to? Is it, yeah, what do you attribute it to?

Well, sometimes it's just factors you never know. But I think the key thing is this is in the NIL era and the big money era, everybody thinks,

I'm just going to go buy a bunch of players and put a roster together.

And, you know, anybody can put a roster together.

The question is, can the coach then make that roster into a team?

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