Mark this one as a major surprise, and not a good one for Penn State.
Grant Toutant, a longtime verbal commit to Penn State, suddenly announced Sunday that he was changing course with his recruitment, decommiting from the Nittany Lions and offering a verbal pledge to Ohio State.
Please respect my decision, no interviews pic.twitter.com/01UKIEyrQU
— Grant Toutant (@toutant_grant) June 10, 2019
In a statement released on his Twitter account, Toutant said the recruiting process has turned him into “a completely different person and athlete (than) I was a year ago, a month ago, even a week ago.” When he committed to Penn State last fall, he was a consensus three-star prospect out of Michigan, a little-known lineman all things considered.
Now, he’s not a little-known lineman. 247sports gave him a fourth star in their rating, and eight months away from signing day, he was bound to get more offers. Certainly, this is his prerogative, but Toutant originally committed to the best offer he had at the time, then he decommitted to commit to Ohio State, which most fans around the country would probably consider a better offer right now. You’ll see a lot of guys doing this, I’m guessing.
It should also be noted that even with Toutant’s reversal, Penn State has five offensive line recruits in the Class of 2020, including four four-star guys.
Donnie Collins has been a member of The Times-Tribune sports staff for nearly 20 years and has been the Penn State football beat writer for Times-Shamrock Newspapers since 2004. The Penn State Football Blog covers Nittany Lions, Big Ten and big-time college football news from Beaver Stadium to the practice field, the bowl game to National Letter of Intent Signing Day. Contact: dcollins@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9100 x5368; @DonnieCollinsTT
