Penn State football long snapper and redshirt junior Chris Stoll was heartwarmingly put on scholarship by the program last week.

And, as it turns out, this was possible thanks to none other than Micah Parsons.

The same day James Franklin announced Stoll earned a scholarship, Parsons happened to be stopping by at practice. The timing of his visit worked out really well.

“I’m not exaggerating, literally the day we gave the scholarship to Stoll, I’m in the meeting, doing it, and I turn and look, and there’s Micah standing in my office,” Franklin said. “And just so you guys know, Stoll got Micah’s scholarship.”

The head coach explained that Penn State was at exactly 85 scholarships, the NCAA limit, before Parsons decided to opt out. When he decided he wasn’t returning, the program was able to appeal to the NCAA and get the scholarship back, later giving it to Stoll instead.

Although this was surely a bittersweet moment for Franklin and the rest of the program, a little bit of panic set in when he saw Micah standing in his office.

“I turned and Micah’s standing there, and I’m like, ‘Does he have second thoughts?'” Franklin said with a smile. “Well, it’s too late! Stoll’s got it.”

Despite a bit of a whirlwind, Parsons’ “crazy” visit back to the Lasch Building went well for Franklin and the program.

“It was good. He was in town and came back to visit family in Harrisburg, and then stopped to see his family here in Happy Valley,” Franklin said.

If Franklin had it his way, Parsons would spend much more time at the facilities helping out the team. Perhaps it would’ve been a similar situation to how Saquon Barkley was planning to help coach the Nittany Lions during spring ball. But just like how Barkley’s plan fell through, Parsons won’t be able to be around the team much due to the coronavirus.

“The challenge is [that] we want Micah around, but there’s also the challenge of how we’re living right now — under the COVID ‘bubble’ that we’ve tried to create,” Franklin said. “So it makes it difficult to have people who aren’t in that bubble and living that lifestyle around us.”

In the middle of Parsons’ departure, defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Brent Pry thinks the defense will step up in his absence. The team has lots of depth at the linebacker position, and guys like Brandon Smith and Jesse Luketa are hungry to fill that hole.

We’ll see how a Parsons-less defense looks when the Nittany Lions travel to Bloomington to take on the Indiana Hoosiers on October 24. Penn State’s kickoff is slated for 3:30 p.m. on FS1.