The Black Shoe Diaries National Signing Day 2016 Primer

Congratulations, reader. You've nearly made it to the finish line of the 2016 recruiting year. It's been an interesting one to follow, to say the least, but on Wednesday, the drama will finally come to a close. As of Monday, Penn State currently has the No. 16 ranked class in the country, but has the opportunity to rise up those rankings, as the rest of their class commits over the course of the early part of this week. The currently verbally committed class is as follows:

Name	Position	Star Rating	High School	Height/Weight
Connor McGovern*	C		Lake-Lehman (Pa.)	6'5"/310
Jake Zembiec*	Pro-QB		Aquinas Institute (Ny.)	6'3"/205
Danny Dalton*	TE		Marshfield (Ma.)	6'4"/240
Alex Gellerstedt*	OT		Dublin Coffman (Oh.)	6'6"/275
Miles Sanders	RB		Woodland Hills (Pa.)	5'11"/199
Michal Menet	OG		Exeter Township (Pa.)	6'5"/273
Shane Simmons	WDE		DeMatha Catholic (Md.)	6'4"/221
Ellison Jordan	DT		Gilman (Md.)	6'0"/270
Daniel Joseph	SDE		Lake Forest Academy (Il.)	6'3"/240
Andrew Pryts	S		Hickory (Pa.)	6'1"/199
Cameron Brown	OLB		Paint Branch (Md.)	6'5"/210
Zechariah McPhearson	CB		Riverdale Baptist School (Md.)	5'11"/183
Aaron Mathews	ATH		Clairton (Pa.)	6'5"/190
Will Fries	OT		Cranford (Nj.)	6'7"/285
Shaka Toney	WDE		Imhotep Institute (Pa.)	6'3"/210
Blake Gillikin	P		Westminster School (Ga.)	6'1"/180
Antonio Shelton	DT		Westerville North (Oh.)	6'3"/280
Alex Barbir	K		South Forsyth (Ga.)	5'10"/195
Dae'lun Darien	WR		Dunbar (Md.)	6'4"/205

*-denotes early enrollee

The class currently holds commitments from 18 players, which means there's room for more to join the fold before the letters of intent roll in. The main names that Penn State fans should be paying attention to are ILB Brendan Ferns, CB Damar Hamlin, WR Dredrick Snelson, WR Dae'lun Darien, CB Lavert Hill and DT Rashad Weaver. Black Shoe Diaries will be here updating you on their statuses throughout the week.

In case you missed it, we profiled all of the early enrollees last week (McGovern, Zembiec, Gellerstedt, Dalton), and will continue using that style of post to profile all of Penn State's commits on National Signing Day itself. Similar to last year, we will use a draft board that will serve as the main hub to keep track of which recruits' letters of intent arrive, and when. When their names officially go up on Penn State's draft board, they'll go up on ours as well. All one needs to do is click the card, and it will send you to their individual profile.

Aside from the profiles, we'll have a few other things running on National Signing Day, including a rundown of how the 2016 class came together, full redshirt predictions, as well as some superlatives for the new Penn State Nittany Lions. Make sure to keep an eye on Black Shoe Diaries all day as the articles roll in.

I'd like to say a quick thank you to all of you that have followed along with our coverage of Penn State recruiting on Black Shoe Diaries this year. We changed how did things a bit, focusing less on Recruiting Roundups (because frankly, they take a lot of time to write) and moved to the Committany Nation format, which allowed us to give quicker updates on things happening in the Penn State recruiting world. Please leave us your feedback on that, we'd love to hear it.

Also, shoutout to Matt de Bear, Bill DiFillippo and Noel Purcell who joined the recruiting team in a more permanent way. Having them around to help out made it much easier to make sure that there was consistent coverage all year long. So please thank those guys in the comments, they deserve it.

If you have any questions about anything National Signing Day-related, feel free to tweet them at me or at the BSD account, or comment on any of this week's NSD-related posts. Thanks for reading.