He got fired for being in second place in the PAC-12?
OK, the Beavers are also the only FBS team that has been eliminated from bowl eligibility.
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OK, the Beavers are also the only FBS team that has been eliminated from bowl eligibility.
ScriptOhio
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
What's next for James Franklin after Penn State firing? Every open school will come calling
Franklin is flawed, but there won't be a more proven candidate on the open market come what will be a historic 2025 coaching carousel
www.cbssports.com
James Franklin will be a red-hot candidate despite Penn State firing: 'No way he goes to Florida, right?'
Franklin is flawed, but there won't be a more proven candidate on the open market come what will be a historic 2025 coaching carousel
It's easy to dunk on Franklin for what he hasn't done. There are the 15 straight losses to AP Top 6 teams, the 1-10 record against Ohio State and only one conference championship in 11 seasons.There was also a lot of winning.
Don't forget that Penn State was a disaster after the firing of Joe Paterno in 2011. Bill O'Brien helped steady the program for two years, but Franklin did the work of rebuilding the foundational structure of the program. And he did nothing but win while improving the stability of the program. He had only one losing season in 11 years, and that was during a weird 2020 COVID season.
Yeah, Franklin failed to beat the best teams. But until this October, he almost always beat everyone else. That's really hard to do in college football, especially in a conference like the Big Ten.
Franklin finished in the top 12 of the CFB Playoff rankings seven of the last nine years. That's consistency all but five or 10 teams nationally would be thrilled with.
In a cycle where more than a dozen Power Four jobs are expected to come open, Franklin should be the first call for a lot of athletic directors.
As one agent texted in the moments after Franklin's firing: "There's no way he goes to Florida, right?"
Franklin is exactly the type of head coach Florida should consider.
He's the ultimate floor-raiser. Vanderbilt has only two nine-win seasons post 1915. Both came under Franklin's direction, and he did in just three seasons with the Commodores. For all of Penn State's advantages, it lagged Ohio State and Michigan in terms of resources for most of Franklin's tenure. That wouldn't be the case at a Florida, a program that invests at an annual national championship level. Given Franklin the type of talent that's already present on Florida's roster, and the Gators will instantly be in the SEC conversation, a place they haven't been in at least half a decade.
If I'm Arkansas, UCLA, Virginia Tech or even a Wisconsin, which could open, I'm hoping Franklin is willing to consider me.....
Just sayin: Even those schools want a head coach that can "beat some of the best teams" every once in a while.
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ScriptOhio
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
James Franklin’s Penn State Firing Reveals College Football’s New, Mercurial Ecosystem
In 11 years, he took the Nittany Lions to seven New Year’s Day bowls, a Big Ten title and a CFP semifinal. But in the revenue-sharing era, loyalty is fickle.
www.si.com
Forde-Yard Dash: James Franklin’s Firing Reveals College Football’s New, Mercurial Ecosystem
In 11 years, the coach took the Nittany Lions to seven New Year’s Day bowls, a Big Ten title and a CFP semifinal. But in the revenue-sharing era, loyalty is more fickle than ever.
First Quarter: The Swift, Sudden, Stunning Fall of James Franklin
Penn State lined up just about everything James Franklin could have desired for this season of big dreams. It bankrolled a $3 million defensive coordinator hire, swiping Jim Knowles from nemesis Ohio State and making him the highest-paid assistant coach in the country. Donors shelled out NIL money to bring in a few key transfers and keep many veteran players on both sides of the ball for one more run, from quarterback Drew Allar to running backs Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen to defensive stars Dani Dennis-Sutton, Zane Durant and Zakee Wheatley. The infrastructure and support staff were all there, as was a nonconference slate of easy home games.If ever the Nittany Lions were going to win a national title under Franklin, this was the year. The fans bought in, and so did the media—including Sports Illustrated, which picked Penn State No. 1 before the season. The preseason ranking in the AP and coaches polls was No. 2.
Six games in, the season has gone to hell and Franklin has been fired. It has been a shocking and costly collapse. Franklin’s buyout is $49 million, second-biggest on record, trailing only the $76 million Jimbo Fisher got from Texas A&M a couple of years ago. That millstone of a contract from 2021 was former athletic director Sandy Barbour’s gift to the school.
The revenue-sharing era, when top programs are paying well in excess of $20.5 million to their players, that’s an even more expensive hit. The new economics of the sport should make contracts of the length and security afforded to Franklin a thing of the past—if presidents and athletic directors have the spine to stand up for fiscal sanity.
But whether it came now or in November, the Franklin buyout price tag was going to be the same. As outrageous as it is, this parting had to happen.
Last January, Penn State was locked in a tie game with Notre Dame and appeared headed to overtime in the College Football Playoff national semifinals. Then Allar threw an interception that set up the Irish for the win*. To go from a 13–3 season—and 34-8 over the previous three seasons—to fired six games later is the merciless way of the modern world.
Between the buyout and the body of work—six seasons of double-digit victories, seven New Year’s Day bowls, one Big Ten title—Franklin would have been one of the most secure coaches in the profession in another era. Times have changed.
A double-overtime home loss to Oregon on Sept. 27 seems to have broken Penn State. It poured jet fuel on the criticism of Franklin. The derisive “Big Game James” label has only gotten heavier as his record against top 10 opponents got worse and worse (4–21).
What followed was much worse, as Big Game James lost a pair of medium games. The Nittany Lions were stunned by winless, 24.5-point underdog UCLA on Oct. 4, then followed that up with an equally disastrous home loss to three-touchdown underdog Northwestern on Saturday. That was believed to be the first time a team lost consecutive games when favored by 20 or more points.
That was it. Penn State reached its saturation point on program toxicity. There is no more salvaging anything in a championship-or-bust season. When the bust happened, the school acted.
If you look around college football, it seems harder than ever to keep a team from spiraling when things go bad. Mike Gundy is the best coach in Oklahoma State history by a wide margin, but he lost the plot last year and was fired four games into this year. Virginia Tech and UCLA went into unmanageable tailspins with upset losses to non-power-conference opponents, necessitating firings at both schools after 0–3 starts. Arkansas lost three in a row, and Sam Pittman was gone. Oregon State fired Trent Bray on Sunday after an 0-7 start.
Is this a factor of the more transactional nature of college football today? Maybe. If teams are built on a year-to-year basis with the objective of winning (and getting paid) now, is there enough commitment between coaches and players to dig in and fix problems?
Now a failure to course-correct has cost Franklin, too. If someone with 14 previous seasons of head coaching experience and 104 career wins can lose a team, anyone can lose a team.
What’s next? Franklin will get another job if he wants one—a good job. He’s 53 years old and has a career winning percentage of .680, which is better than Lou Holtz, Mack Brown, Frank Beamer, Kirk Ferentz and Bill Snyder, among others. Producing back-to-back 9–4 seasons at Vanderbilt should make him attractive in the SEC, where there is one opening and more to come.
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Penn State is well within its rights to shoot for national titles. But when a program wobbles, it can all break down very quickly. James Franklin found that out, when more than a decade of success was wiped out in three disastrous weeks.
*
Just sayin': Yeah, that's the state of college football today.
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Buckeye doc
Hall of Fame
Oh no, you don't think Ryan Day would hire him as an analyst, do you?
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Oh no, you don't think Ryan Day would hire him as an analyst, do you?
Shiiiit, I would in a heartbeat.
"What would you do here James?" and whatever that is....do the opposite.
You can't lose
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If he goes somewhere else, I'd like him to actually do well to see if the cult has any capacity for self-critique.
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Like 10% of all NFL players were born in the state of Florida. Currently something like 200. Thats enough to have 3 college teams in the state made up of almost entirely future NFL players while still letting 50 other NFL players escape to tOSU and such. Thats a top job if for no other reason than recruiting is easy. He convinced some pretty good players to come to the middle of nowhere Pennsyltucky. He could almost win a title every season in Florida ffs
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