Sunday Column: Franklin Adapting to Changing Football Landscape in Ways That Go Beyond Pandemic

“Control freak” isn’t the nicest term to describe college football coaches, partly because half of that term is the word “freak” and partly because it paints the picture of a person who simply cannot have enough control, as if it is a commodity rather than a hard-to-define, relative construct, particularly as it pertains to several dozen giant young men beating the hell out of each other for three hours on 12-14 Saturdays each year.

So let us, then, refer to them instead as “organizational enthusiasts,” which is basically the same idea but suggests that the coaches are more about keeping order and consistency and less about being tyrants.

James Franklin, Penn State football’s boss of bosses since 2014, is no less of an organizational enthusiast than any of his peers. It’s what has made him one of the most successful and well-compensated men in his profession, what helped lead his program out of post-sanctions purgatory and what allows him to keep his team in the national conversation more often than not. It’s also why the last 12 months have been so challenging for him for reasons that begin but do not end with the coronavirus pandemic. 

“College football has changed dramatically over the last five years,” Franklin said during a conference call with reporters last week. “Whether you like it or not, you have to embrace it. You’ve got to evolve, and that’s where we’re at.”

Franklin was speaking specifically about the transfer portal, which is one of the sea changes in the sport. No longer is it enough to recruit the nation’s best high school and junior-college players year-round; coaches must also have one eye on the portal, which can give you a talented, experienced running back just as quickly as it can take away your talented, experienced lineman. You could argue that, so far, the portal has been at least a wash if not an overall positive for Penn State – which added four transfers this month – but, like recruiting itself, those evaluations are hard to measure at any single point in time.

What’s clear is that Franklin has mixed feelings about it and has said as much on several occasions during the last few years. Last week, he intimated that the portal might do more harm than help when it came to players receiving their degrees, which in Franklin’s opinion is still kind of a big deal. He also spoke about not adding talent for talent’s sake but ensuring it fits with the rest of the roster. Franklin’s always been a big intangibles guy; he promotes a family atmosphere in his program and, to his credit, that’s usually one of the reasons his players give when they’re asked why they committed to Penn State. It’s harder to push that particular selling point to a 21-year-old who only has a year of eligibility left than it is to a 17-year-old who has never been away from home.

But whatever his feelings about the portal, Franklin has evolved his approach, just as he’s evolved to a style of play in the highest levels of the sport where the offense, generally, is at least a step ahead of defense. That’s why he pressed the reset button after just one season with Kirk Ciarrocca at the offensive controls and brought in Mike Yurcich, why he added running back John Lovett to a group that already included four four-star backs and why he was frank in his assessment of his team’s quarterback play in 2020.

Franklin has also been forced to evolve when it comes to directing his players and his staff during a pandemic. More meetings via Zoom. Less practice time. No game day atmosphere for recruits. Spring ball is still up in the air. His family is still 1,200 miles away in Florida. To be clear – evolving and adjusting and still producing is what earns Franklin his seven-figure salary. It’s not part of the job so much as it IS the job. But when organizational enthusiasts are forced to re-organize their personal and professional worlds so completely in a relatively short amount of time … well, it’s not as easy as installing a new blitz package.

Many of Franklin’s greatest strengths – he’s a good communicator, he sees the big picture, he constantly studies and applies best practices across not only college football but in sport and society – have been tested, modified, or temporarily shelved due to the changes mentioned above. Sure, he would like to spend more time innovating and less reacting. But because he sees the big picture, he knows that the only thing certain is that no one knows when the uncertainty as it relates to the pandemic will end, and that he will have to continue to adjust his program’s routines and priorities accordingly until it does. 

The same goes for the larger changes in the game and the sport that pre-date the virus. There is only so much he or any coach can control. Continuing to evolve, though, will not only help his team in the present but make him an even better coach in the future.