On Friday, in his press conference for on-campus Rose Bowl media day, Penn State athletic director Patrick Kraft announced that all the allocated tickets for the 2023 Rose bowl have sold out. He also spoke about facilities renovations, NIL, retaining assistant coaches, and transparency his its athletic department.
At the start of his press conference, he spoke about how the school has sold out its allocated pool of tickets for the Rose Bowl and he has sold almost 92,000 season tickets for the 2023 season. This is the first time in school history that those numbers have been announced publicly. Kraft said that he wants to be more transparent to the fan base and true to who he is as a man.
“Its who is am. I’m going to be honest with you.”
Also in his news conference, Kraft spoke about how Beaver Stadium spoke about how he inherited the Penn State Facilities “Master Plan” that has not made too much progress. According to Kraft, there have been 19 studies over the last 10 years. He told the media that would take this issue to the Board of Trustees and school president to finalize Neili Bendapudi to solve this issue.
“I want to make this building better and were going to do that,” Kraft said. “Were very close and were going to do that, all the data is there now.”
Next, Kraft went into the NIL collective and how it impacts Penn State athletics and the program trying to adjust to the collective to be better for student-athletes, coaches, fans, and recruits. He admits that he has a lot to learn about the NIL collective, but the school is in a good spot when it comes to the NIL collective because of its deal with Fanatics which allows the ability to sell players’ jerseys and their relationship with the NIL Collective Succes with Honor which is the preferred option for NIL for Penn State.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.He then talked about how he is committed to keeping his assistant coaches in his football program for Penn State head coach James Franklin and he wants to build the best staff to build a national champion at Penn State.
When he came to Penn State in July, he asked Franklin “What do we need to be successful, what do we have to do to win a national championship?’
Penn State has had three offensive coordinators over the past three years and cornerbacks coach Terry Smith is the only coach that has been on staff since Franklin has been head coach building continuity is important to Kraft for his athletic programs.
“If you have a great staff and you’ve got great people, you want to keep them as long as you can,” Kraft said. “Because every time you turn that over, especially in the coaching ranks, its just different philosophies…It takes longer to get the process going.”
Kraft looks to win the Rose Bowl in his first season as athletic director at Penn State on July 2, 2023, when they take on Utah.
