Former Conrad Weiser quarterback on verge of winning national championship
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Ben Harakel was a better student than quarterback at Conrad Weiser. He was ranked No. 2 in his class and went on to study aerospace engineering at Penn State.
A decade later he’s on the verge of winning a national championship as part of the Indiana Hoosiers football coaching staff.
Top-ranked and unbeaten Indiana plays Miami Monday night in the BCS championship game. Harakel, a senior defensive analyst on Curt Cignetti’s staff, will be stationed in the press box at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens helping defensive coordinator Bryant Haines and the Hoosiers stop the Hurricanes.
Indiana has beaten its first three playoff opponents — Ohio State, Alabama, and Oregon — by a combined 107-36 points and is a significant favorite in the championship game.
Here is Harakel’s story and how found his way into the national spotlight:
(This story was initially published May 13, 2025.)
James Franklin had the same question most people do when they take a look at Ben Harakel’s resume.
“What,” the Penn State football coach asked him, “are you doing here?”
Harakel, a former quarterback at Conrad Weiser, was on the Nittany Lions football support staff at the time and catching the attention of some of the senior coaches there.
Harakel, ranked No. 2 academically in his class at Weiser, planned on leaving football behind when he arrived in State College. Bigger things, he figured, were in his future, and he threw himself into his engineering studies.
A few weeks into his freshman year, 2014, football started tugging at him again. He couldn’t stand being sidelined for the first time in his life so he reached out to Nittany Lions quarterbacks coach Ricky Rahne to see if there was some way to get involved with the program.
Harakel was directed him to video director Jevin Stone, who saw in Harakel a bright kid with a solid football background; he put him work on various projects to support the coaching staff.
Stone, so impressed with Harakel’s football knowledge and work ethic, passed his name up the chain.
Harakel was soon working with the Penn State graduate assistants, digging out stats and putting together depth charts of that week’s opponent to help Nittany Lions coaches prepare the game plan.
Before he knew it he was side-by-side with defensive coordinator Brent Pry, assisting him in film breakdown.
“He caught on that I was industrious, able to get things done,” Harakel said of Pry. “He saw my attention to detail, so he threw me some side projects. (Cornerbacks coach) Terry Smith kept giving me more stuff to do. I kept saying yes to whatever (they) asked.”
Franklin noticed, too. He saw that Harakel was on track to earn a degree in aerospace engineering and wondered aloud why this eager young kid was wasting his time cutting up practice tapes when he could’ve been mapping out space missions at NASA.
People, including his parents, kid him about that all the time.
“I just love being around football,” said Harakel, who grew up in a football family, saw his father and uncle (Tony Harakel) coach the Scouts, and was determined to follow their lead. “I always loved being around it. I couldn’t give it up as easily as I thought I could.”
Harakel was so adept at his football job that Franklin put him on scholarship his final semester, in 2018. Pry was so impressed by his work that he made a call to contacts James Madison University, which led to a spot as a GA on Curt Cignetti’s staff. Five years later, when Cignetti took the head coaching job at the University of Indiana, he took Harakel with him.
Last December, a decade after losing his battle to become Conrad Weiser’s starting quarterback, Harakel found himself in the press box at Notre Dame Stadium on a headset feeding information to Hoosiers defensive coordinator Bryant Haines in the opening round of the College Football Playoffs.
“I’ve been blessed,” the 29-year-old realizes.
Harakel has enjoyed a Forest Gump-like existence in his football journey.
He arrived at Penn State in 2014 with the football program reeling from the effects of NCAA sanctions brought on by the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Franklin struggled to keep the program above water that season, and the next.
By 2016 the Nittany Lions were back on top, winning the Big Ten championship and reaching the Rose Bowl. The next year they won 11 games and beat Washington in the Fiesta Bowl. They reached the Citrus Bowl in 2018, Harakel’s last year on staff.
“It was very gratifying to see the program come back like that,” Harakel said. “That was special to be a part of. There were a bunch of special people in that building that really changed the course of that program forever.”
He arrived at James Madison in 2019, Cignetti’s first season in Harrisonburg. The Dukes went 14-2 and reached the FCS championship game. Three years later they debuted at the FBS level and had immediate success, going 8-3 and sharing the Sun Belt East title. A year later they won their first 10 games, cracked the Top 20 for the first time, and made the Armed Services Bowl.
And then there was last season, Cignetti and Harakel’s first at Indiana, long a bottom-tier program overshadowed by Big Ten elites such as Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State.
Things changed immediately. The Hoosiers went 8-1 in the Big Ten (their only loss was to eventual national champ Ohio State), set a program record by winning 11 games, and reached the playoffs for the first time.
“None of us were shocked by the outcome,” Harakel said. “Coach Cignetti’s message (when he arrived) was there’s no self-imposed limitations. We don’t expect to lose.”
Harakel is a defensive and special teams analyst for Cignetti. He works closely with Haines and is involved in every aspect of Indiana’s defense. He’s involved in recruiting, too, and is responsible for much of eastern Pennsylvania, as well as part of New York and New Jersey.
He didn’t realize it when he first started doing film work at Penn State 11 years ago but he knows now that coaching football will be his life’s work. The hours are long and he doesn’t come close to earning what he could as an engineer; there’s more to life than a fat paycheck, he has learned.
His mother always told him that if he found a job he loves it will never feel like work. He has, and it doesn’t.
“I truly love coming to work every day and coaching ball,” he said.
His dad, who spent 30-plus season coaching at Weiser and helping develop the youth programs there, instilled his loved for the game, and for coaching.
“He taught me what it means to develop young men,” he said, “that it’s not just for yourself. Seeing the respect and love that former players had for him, it really stuck with me.”
Harakel was a “coach-on-the-field” type quarterback at Weiser but didn’t have the arm to get on the field much. He blew out his arm his junior baseball season and it never fully recovered.
He learned to channel his love for and knowledge of the sport in another direction.
Cignetti will never ask him to design a rocket or launch a satellite but Harakel believes his engineering background helps him as a coach.
“Understanding how pieces come together and being able to simplify (football concepts) and convey it to the guys (is important),” he said. “(I’m) able to see and understand everything that’s going on and put our guys in the best position (to succeed) and to know what everybody else is doing around them.”
Harakel is on the fast track of the college football coaching world; should that ride end he’s not worried about his next paycheck.
“I have the greatest backup option in the world,” he joked. “I have an engineering degree from Penn State.”
