Relationships are important to Harrisburg’s Messiah Mickens. Not just in football, but in life.

And it was a relationship—one with head coach James Franklin—that got the blue-chip 4-star running back Messiah Mickens to move off a weekend visit to Oklahoma and instead head to Blacksburg, Virginia.

From that visit, Mickens realized his future home was with his past recruiter, as the one-time Penn State commit has signed to play college football at Virginia Tech under the former Nittany Lions’ head coach.

“It changed my whole perspective about Virginia Tech,” Mickens said. “It’s a great school and has great education, and they were once a big time football team that was competing for championships.”

“So just me knowing that Franklin was gonna get it back up to that same stature [made it e

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