So now, it seems like about half the Penn State fan base wants James Franklin fired. After a 41-11 record in the previous four seasons. Let’s just get right to the seed of the story because, as I see it tonight, that’s it.
Their case is pretty convincing, at least on its surface. The Nittany Lions have not won a game after five tries and really haven’t come terribly close since the first one. No such thing has happened in the entire timeline of a team that dates back to before there were televisions or telephones, airplanes or automobiles.
So how could it not be a firing offense for a head coach who earns more in a year than probably any 25 combined random people reading this sentence? How could he be possibly worth it?
Add to the equation that many of those same people are helping to pay that salary. Now, you have a combustible jury.
Except they aren’t the real jury. The young men on team he coaches are.
And so, the case against Franklin would distill to this: They are deliberating with their play every weekend.
Their decision isn’t quite due. But some sort of threshold in the proceedings might have been reached on Saturday when the Lions got their doors blown off yet again in the first half on the way to a 41-21 loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes.
The difference between the two teams looked like the chasm you see in physicality between a perennial winner and a habitual loser.
When one team must deceive another in order to succeed, while the opponent can merely run over them with brute force, it’s a basic problem. That’s a trouble Penn State has not commonly had in its football history. But it does now.
There were years during the Paterno-era Dark Ages (2000-04) where Penn State was tough but couldn’t run with other teams. When its offense was so anemic and strategically backward that it needed near-perfect games from its defense to win.
But I can’t remember a Penn State defense that’s been this easily moved off the ball, a team that’s been this easily stuffed at scrimmage on either side.
With all the strategic innovations in the game and all the rule changes that have favored the offense and finesse football, we tend to forget that the game still eventually comes down to blocking and tackling. This team does neither very well at all.
You could blame the COVID pandemic for lack of contact practice, but everyone is dealing with the same restrictions.
I’ve been covering Penn State for a full three decades now, which accounts for almost a fourth of all of those 134 years of football you’ve been hearing about in which no team was this bad. I can only speak to those teams. But this might be worst of them all with the possible exception of the 2003 group that ended up 3-9 with two of the wins coming against a couple of bad low-major teams from Kent State and Temple. We’ll have to see.
The thing is, the coach of that team had acquired some capital through a couple of national championships. And his salary was about one-tenth of Franklin’s during a very different era of compensation.
So, to me there really was only one question that I was interested in asking after this game. It wasn’t about strategy or in-game decisions or player groups or the quarterback fiasco. I made sure to get in line first on the videoconference because I wanted Franklin’s mind to be as clearheaded as possible when I asked it. The question was: What would he say to all of you about the product he’s been putting on the field? His response:
“Yeah, it’s not good enough. There’s obviously a lot of circumstances going on this year, but none of that matters at the end of the day. We gotta find a way to play good football. And we haven’t done that.
“So, I get it. I get the hard question.”
What can he say?
The last time I asked a question like that was after another game against Iowa 16 years ago, the 6-4 loss that made Joe Paterno 1-11 in his previous 12 Big Ten games, on the way to what would be 1-13.
See, people forget, or they might not even be old enough to remember. But it’s been just about this bad before, under one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game.
By the way, Paterno’s answer was shorter:
“You write whatever you wanna write.”
Know what else? It got turned around. The very next season, Penn State won a Big Ten championship, won the Orange Bowl and finished #3 in the nation.
Many, including the president of the school, its athletic director and its business manager, came to old coach’s house and asked him to quit the previous December. He wouldn’t.
I don’t think Franklin will, either. I don’t think he will be fired. Nor am I advocating it here. Fiscally, it’s a total non-starter, especially during the financially strapped COVID era. If terminated without cause, he’s guaranteed an additional $33 million beyond this season through 2025, per an extension just signed earlier this year. But if this gets rolling much farther south without at least one win, who can tell what other fissures might open?
I don’t think Franklin’s necessarily lost the team. I think through all sorts of different emotional and physical forces, they’ve lost their spirit.
I think they’re victims of expectation at a place where this sort of utter failure is not accepted. I don’t think they’ve been coached terribly well by a transitioning and distracted staff during a past nine months unlike any in the past century. I think they have a leadership void. And then there’s this:
I don’t think they’re all that good. Especially not as good as they or most everyone else thought they were. After opt-outs and injuries and career-ending medical conditions and some whole units who have not developed very well, this isn’t the team it was anticipated to be.
All of this is a humbling experience, especially for program that has seen nothing but winning seasons since that 2004 outfit. Nothing can be so deflating as unrealized expectations.
I also think this: The last people you want leading a group in dire distress are those who lose their minds. The ones who begin raising their voices, placing blame, advocating radical plans of action not based in logic, and generally creating chaos.
Many of those types are part of the fan base, too. Because they’ve invested their hopes and time and, in some cases, considerable sums of money. And they’re getting nothing in return. Of course, they react with rants and rage like somebody on the phone with a company that’s trying to rip them off – and has lousy customer service to boot.
So, the only way to solve this sort of problem is systematically and deliberately with level heads and sensible plans.
If that plan is a new coach, then fine. So, it is. I just don’t believe that judgment can be made yet. The jury – the team – is still out. It still has a month to deliberate.
And maybe the accused will have some compelling evidence to present that could move them yet. I’ve seen it happen before.
More Iowa @ Penn State coverage:
• James Franklin on Penn State’s 4th-down calls: ‘Not just about the decision, it’s about execution’.
• Scenes from Penn State’s 41-21 loss to Iowa.
• Penn State’s many major offensive flaws exposed again, run defense gutted, more PSU-Iowa takeaways.
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Is this really as bad as Penn State football has been? And should Franklin’s future as coach be on the line? - PennLive
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