2023 Season

In Defense of James Franklin

Copyright Dan Rainville - Hanover Evening Sun (IMAGN)

Familiarity breeds contempt, but all things considered, Penn State fans should get comfortable with the devil they know.

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

*Please remember to click the ‘Share My Address With For The Blogy’ box when checking out so we know where to mail your gift!

A final few games remain in the season, but already this much is chiseled in stone: Penn State will go down as the four-team playoff era’s perpetual bridesmaid.

No program teetered as consistently on the cusp of inclusion in the postseason final four without ever actually taking the plunge. Fellow 900-win programs Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, and Notre Dame all made multiple playoff trips, and even lesser brands such as Michigan State, Cincinnati, and TCU, despite some forgettable results, still got to hang a banner marking their membership in an exclusive club ordained to forever exclude Penn State. This year began with sky-high hopes and flowery prose about the potential for a magical Autumn in the Nittany Valley and ended with a sickeningly familiar goose egg in the win column for the two games that mattered most.

That means the time has come to turn our attention toward the future. Even these final two regular season games and the best bowl for which the Lions can qualify are mostly about setting the tone for the campaigns to come. The glories of the here and now are already beyond our reach. We yet again find ourselves preparing for a Winter of what-ifs.

That hollow feeling of unfulfilled promise cost now-former offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich his job this week. Yurcich arrived in Happy Valley heralded as a savant, but his results never truly matched the hype. This season’s often-disjointed, occasionally-impotent attack, which all but vanished in the limited moments of truth the schedule allowed, sealed his fate. The move by head coach James Franklin was necessary, but also conveniently diverted some of attention away from mounting discontent brought on by another collapse against the beasts of the Big Ten East. Now the imperative of making his sixth offensive coordinator hire his best must weigh on Franklin, who is surely feeling the pressure of expectations he himself set.

Any discussion of Penn State’s future demands a reckoning over Franklin’s place in it, and the story of the present is more or less written, so let’s have the talk.

First though, indulge me in a sidebar. Back in 2019, during the Maryland game and without much fanfare, Penn State debuted the “Lawnboyz chain,” a bling-y necklace bestowed upon a running back who scored a touchdown upon returning to the sidelines. There was a lively conversation online all week, driven mostly by Twitter and message boards, about whether this new development represented a much-needed breath of fresh air or an unforgivable transgression against the program’s workmanlike identity. My Obligatory castmates Brandon Noble, Kevin Horne, and I followed it closely (Mike the Mailman wisely ignores that sort of nonsense), and we devoted an entire segment of the show to discussing it.

At my tailgate the following weekend, I was talking football with two friends – one of whom was the president of a large Mid-Atlantic Alumni Association chapter while the other travels round-trip from Philadelphia for every home game, big-time Penn State fans – and I mentioned the mild controversy over the Lawnboyz chain. They had absolutely no idea what the hell I was talking about. It was a valuable reminder that the perpetual churn of the online echo chamber represents only a fraction of even the most dedicated Penn State football fans.

I mention this because I will, in all likelihood, stray into some similarly niche territory that will feel familiar to regulars on X dot com or various message boards, but might barely register with more socially well-adjusted readers. The deep-dive reasoning behind calls for James Franklin to be fired may be lost on some fans, but practically everyone has heard them at this point. Some are rooted in long-held, deeply considered beliefs about the best path forward for the program; many amount to an emotional pressure-release valve for reasonable people who’ve been driven nearly mad waiting for the first win over Ohio State since the Obama Administration. The best way for everyone to move forward constructively is to address them all head on.

James Franklin is tough to stick up for. Honest to God, I may never have had to defend another human being more frequently, nor enjoyed it less, than I have in preaching patience with the Franklin regime over the last six years.

Fair or not, I can say with complete confidence that, unlike fringe consternation over trivialities like a fake diamond necklace for the tailbacks, there is a widespread perception that he hesitates to take responsibility when the program struggles. He also seems to lack the necessary self-awareness to understand how he is viewed in this way and the forthright confidantes who might advise him on how to change it. He has been more direct of late in stating that all responsibility ultimately rests with him, but rarely does he lead with this, and it sometimes feels forced. It’s irritating and not especially fun to have to defend. In my estimation, Franklin frequently does himself – and those who would support him – no favors.

After Penn State looked helpless and outclassed in losing to Ohio State, Franklin called the participants “two of the best teams in the country.” Dumb. Tone deaf. Totally disconnected from the mood of the moment. How is someone so skilled at recruiting also so remarkably incapable of reading the room? During his most recent weekly press conference, facing one question after another about the team’s poor performance against Michigan and the ensuing termination of Yurcich, he commented that he hoped to get a few questions about Rutgers. My observation in response was that, “People in Hell want ice water.”  Rutgers?? Understanding that fans had just watched their high hopes for a season that began with championship aspirations – ambitions he did nothing to discourage – unceremoniously vaporized by a team without a head coach, he expected to get questions about playing Rutgers? Even if you think this stuff, James, you don’t have to say it out loud.

All of this is to say that if certain aspects of the man’s affect and demeanor rub you the wrong way, I get it. He and I share the same barber, as the old joke goes, which is good, because there have been many moments, during this season and the ones before it, when he would make me want to pull my hair out. I think the only honest defense of James Franklin is one that also acknowledges his faults. As tempers have flared over the last week, I’ve seen the debate over his job status devolve into a dumbed-down brawl pitting pitchfork-toting rioters against clueless sycophants. Uncritical devotion does nothing to convince the persuadable and probably does more damage to the case over the long-term.

For example, I have noticed a recent resurgence of the theory that Penn State’s facilities and lackluster Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) funding for athletes are the primary culprits behind the team’s failure to win its biggest games. If only Penn State had more state-of-the-art buildings, or its cheapskate alumni had ponied up more cash for lucrative endorsement deals, the Nittany Lions would finally have the firepower to win like we all wish they would. As with most sophistry, there are grains of truth here, but the reality is almost certainly far more complex. Not only is the notion a backhanded slap at the current players, the ones who chose to play for Penn State despite our supposed on-campus hovels and destitute alumni, it vastly oversimplifies and distorts the facts.

These arguments would hold a lot more water with me if we heard them before the season. It stands to reason that if the relationship between lavish football facilities, spendthrift NIL, and winning games is actually so simple and direct, then we might have been warned off any optimism for 2023 well in advance. Truly, a more compelling case, made back in August, would go something like this: “Terrible news, Penn State fans! You shouldn’t get your hopes up, because our lack of single-room athletic dorms and second-rate NIL funding have doomed this year’s squad. It is baked in, and it is already too late for them. All you can do is immediately dig deep and donate so that we’re not still stuck here three years from now. Don’t shoot the messenger!”

However, this sort of talk only tends to surface after the disappointing losses, making it feel more like excuse-making from Sunday morning quarterbacks than a thoroughly thought-out framework. Don’t misunderstand me. None of this is to say that palatial football buildings and an uncapped salary pool for coaches and players aren’t important. They most certainly are. But Penn State would benefit from a structured, thoughtful conversation about it led by informed, rational people. Give some specifics and set some standards. The flaw in the current discourse is that Franklin and his staff are absolved of responsibility for failure, while keeping credit for success, and we are never offered specifics about at what point this could change.

I won’t belabor the point. The conversation is exhausting. I will, however, offer this unsolicited advice to anyone stating this case: You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. Ditch every variation on, “This is actually your fault, you cheap bastards,” in favor of something persuasive. You will never shame or bully disgruntled fans into donating more of their hard-earned money.

Another popular trope this week has been to compare Joe Paterno and James Franklin, either to tacitly blame Franklin for falling short of the standard set by the sport’s winningest coach or to tacitly blame Joe for leaving the program in such shambles that even 10 years on, James is still weighed down by it. The Tweet below from Dylan Callaghan Croley of Rivals got heavy circulation this week and caught my eye.

Just to be crystal clear, Dylan states further down on this very thread that his intention was not to imply a comparison, favorable or otherwise, between the most successful stretch in program history and the last seven years under Franklin, and I am NOT suggesting that he did. Nevertheless, I found the concept intriguing. My interest was further piqued when I saw some references online to the final days of the Paterno era that asserted things are so much better now than in Joe’s last years. So I thought it might be beneficial to surface some more information to elevate these discussions and see how that seven-season stretch from ’80-86, the final seven years of Paterno, and James Franklin’s last seven seasons all stack up.

In general, I am very much against doing any kind of Paterno vs. Franklin talk. Joe was a unique figure in college football history, going so far back and having so much continuity at one institution and enjoying so much success. Like following the Bear at Alabama, it is a difficult task to follow a legend. We should try to make it easier, not harder, for the guy tackling that challenge, so why bring it up? Furthermore, it ought to be damn near impossible to measure up to the standard set by Paterno. He was an all-time great in his profession and one of the University’s most generous philanthropic supporters to boot. Everything that made him special was also what made him rare and vice versa. It is unreasonable to expect to see his like again in our lifetimes. Bill O’Brien, James Franklin, and whoever eventually follows them, deserve to be evaluated on their own merits.

Having said that, I also believe this context will provide some value. This chart compares those three seven-year snapshots of Penn State football across various metrics. “Upset Losses” are defined as games where the Lions lost to a team with the lower ranking; all rankings use the AP Poll. Comparing Joe’s last seven years to James’ most recent seven gets a little wonky, but I think the numbers actually shake out. Each has a strange nine-game stretch (the 2011 scandal year for Paterno, COVID for Franklin), and even though this season has three games left, you can easily determine how the various outcomes would impact the totals.

Some quick observations…

• The 1980s made Penn State football. Despite all the program’s previous laurels, things went to another level during a stretch that saw the Nittany Lions win over 80% of their games, claim two national championships and two other third-place finishes, and triumph in 62% of matchups with ranked teams, including going nine of 15 when facing Top-Five opponents. This amazing run of success stands alone.

• Starting with the turnaround season of 2005, JoePa’s final seven years at the helm stack up remarkably well when compared with the Franklin era so far. In most respects, they are a virtual mirror image. It is important to note that 2005-2011 included two Big Ten Championships.

• Both time periods produced similar winning percentages and nearly identical numbers in all the key metrics I compared. They both saw losing records in games versus ranked opponents (11 wins for Franklin, 10 for Paterno) and major struggles against Top-10 competition.

• A postseason victory this season could tie Franklin with Paterno for bowl wins over this stretch. His 3-1 record in New Year’s Six bowls during this time is impressive. Paterno went 1-1, winning the Orange and losing the Rose.

• Assuming the Nittany Lions take care of the slumping Spartans in Detroit next Friday, Joe’s final seven years and James’ most recent seven will each feature three wins over Michigan and four against Michigan State. Paterno defeated Ohio State twice during this stretch (Tom Bradley also led the 2011 squad to victory in Columbus). Penn State’s current program-record seven-game losing streak to the Buckeyes began in 2017.

Now before you start reading implied messaging into the above where it does not exist, I am not trying to foment division between Franklin folks and “Paterno People.” If anything, I hope we can avoid that sort of pointless internecine warfare completely and instead appreciate what both the differences and similarities might tell us about Penn State as a program and where it may go from here. First of all, I am aware that expanding the window by an additional year would bring in 2016’s 11-3 Big Ten Championship year for Franklin and an abysmal 4-7 campaign in 2004 for JoePa, one forever marred by the travesty of 6-4. Since the original comment that inspired the exercise covered 1980-86, I stuck with that model of a seven-year sample size.

That contrasting Paterno’s final seven seasons on the sidelines with the majority of Franklin’s tenure results in surprisingly similar numbers may suggest a few important conclusions. For one thing, we may need to remember Joe’s final decade more charitably. The football wasn’t always flashy, and the familiar struggles with top teams were there, but if you’re generally satisfied with Franklin’s current run, then ’05 to the end holds up pretty well. What’s more, the striking similarities may also warn us of certain built-in challenges that are endemic to winning at Penn State. There are stumbling blocks here.

We know about the geographic limitations of Happy Valley versus more urban settings as well as the recruiting disparities between the Northeast and Texas, California, and the South. The regional differences encompass more than just the disparate stockpiles of blue-chip talent too. One reason Penn State has been slow to construct Taj Mahal athletics facilities is that the, ahem, “football culture” differs greatly in this part of the country. Money is no object when the imperative is to win at all costs, and whether you consider it a feature or a bug, that mentality is absent from Old Main, or at least it has been. If the waning days of Paterno’s long career and the steady rise of Franklin’s look about the same, then perhaps that offers a window into a sort of baseline for the program.

It may also suggest that after helping guide Penn State through the scandal’s aftermath, undeniably the nadir for PSU football in multiple respects, James Franklin now has things heading back in the right direction. If we imagine a trendline peaking in the 1980s, leveling out, and then dipping a bit into the new millennium with a major drop-off precipitated by the NCAA sanctions, it stands to reason that we could look back and see similar sights on the way back up that we first encountered on the way down.

On the other hand, it is, as noted above, probably unfair to hold Franklin to the standard of Paterno at the absolute peak of his career. The original tweet that sent me down this rabbit hole simply compared wins during the 80s to the present, but a closer examination shows how far off we remain from realizing the program’s full potential (you can argue whether such heights are still achievable, but I am telling you they are). I bring this up because it took Joe 17 years to get there, with a lot of setbacks, disappointment, and heartbreaking failures at critical junctures along the way. By the dawning of 1982 season, Penn State fans had seen a lot of winning since Joe took the helm in 1966 along with many tough losses, including missing a first shot at the national title under Paterno after an infamous Alabama goalline stand in the ’79 Sugar Bowl. I am certain that if The Obligatory Pregame Show existed in the early 80s, I would be insisting that Joe was an obviously talented coach who would win you a bunch of games, but never the big one. He had plenty of critics back then, and that sentiment was popular among them.

I am not saying James Franklin is a latter-day Joe Paterno. In fact, to the extent I have compared the two (which I hate doing, generally), it is in service of illustrating the relative uselessness of such comparisons and putting those circular arguments to bed. But Penn Staters do not even need to look to relevant, and therefore popular, cautionary tales from the likes of Nebraska, Texas, Miami, Florida State, USC, or Texas A&M about the perils of casting about in search of an elusive savior. We can learn from our very own history. Staying the course worked out in the end, no matter how impossible that Sugar Bowl victory over Georgia seemed until the moment it happened – probably just as impossible as beating Michigan felt last Saturday. We feel today the pain of our forebears enduring near-miss seasons of double-digit wins in 1978, 1980, and 1981 (some of you are lucky, or unfortunate, depending on your point of view, to have experienced both!).

And so time is a factor. Nobody wants to hear this, because it feels like an excuse, and as we noted above, James has developed an unhelpful reputation for always having one of those at the ready, but Franklin needs and deserves more time.

Maybe your “skin is crawling,” (to borrow a phrase from James) but approach this with an open mind as we end up back close to where we began, with the facilities and NIL and his sometimes-regrettable utterances during pressers. Franklin has been open about how pleased he has been with the working relationship he enjoys with Pat Kraft and Neeli Bendapudi, which is no accident, nor are his recent comments emphasizing the alignment between the University administration and the football program. One barely needs to read between the lines to hear him screaming to the rafters that their predecessors – Sandy Barbour and Eric Barron – never bought into, or quite possibly even understood, the sort of all-hands-on-deck investment necessary to replicate the results of the 1980s in a modern college football environment. The skeptic will see only a stalling tactic designed to buy time through deferred gratification, but the rational mind ought to the detect authenticity in his claims.

Yes, the facilities talk may get overheated – the football complex is far from Third World – but most, if not all, of the recent upgrades were probably table stakes for remaining competitive in the sport’s highest echelons. They were only just completed, and Franklin did have to fight like hell to get them built. This trio of head coach, athletic director, and University president hasn’t been together two full years, and while we all wish Penn State was headed to the playoffs, we also should not scoff at the results thus far. It is extremely reasonable to look at the most supportive bosses Franklin has had in a decade on the job, especially considering their predecessors were functional impediments at times, and suggest this system needs more time to work.

Next season, the 12-team playoff and the 18-team Big Ten will drastically alter the paradigm of college football (like the third time in five years this has happened). Taking the above factors into account – the steadily improving alignment between football’s needs and the rest of the institutional priorities, opening of improved on-campus facilities, plus continued success on the recruiting trail – James Franklin’s success so far has earned him the right to show what he can do in this new and altered landscape, which may bring more challenging games versus name-brand opponents, but won’t require annual meetings with Ohio State and Michigan and will be more forgiving of a loss.

If the net effect of all of this has just been to make you angry, I understand. Emotions are raw right now, and like I said, tough to defend! But I will leave you with this. James Franklin is two wins, over Rutgers and flailing Michigan State, away from doing for a second straight year something I believed he couldn’t do even once: Run through an entire regular season without losing to an inferior opponent. He has at least demonstrated some capacity for growth and improvement.

If he does it, maybe it hints that the patience I am preaching will ultimately bear fruit. And if he doesn’t, well, please just spare me the pitchforks.

Three for the Road:
  1. I don’t know if James Franklin is even interested in a reunion with Joe Moorhead, and I’m not really sure it would even be the right thing to do, but if it happened, I’d be thrilled. I love that guy, and it wouldn’t hurt to have a feel-good story to root for right now.

 

  1. If nothing else, let it be said that in his final game at Penn State, our offensive coordinator died as he lived. The offensive playcalling throughout the biggest Penn State home game in nearly a decade was like a Greatest Hits of the confusing, infuriating curiosities of the mind of Mike Yurcich. That “swinging gate” failed two-point conversion was a more appropriate swan song than Jordan’s final shot (well, should-have-been final shot…thanks Wizards) against the Jazz.

 

  1. Boy, Michigan sure changed its tune pretty fast, huh? Last week you had former cable anchors sharing wild conspiracy theories online and a university president releasing an official statement like he was posting on the Wolverines Den message board. It was fun to watch reality come pouring over the walls just before they actually extended this farce into a real-life courtroom. “Well, well, well… if it isn’t my old nemesis, the consequences of my actions.”

November 17, 2023by FTB Chris