The James Franklin Hire: Thoughts from a Penn State Dad and PSU Season Ticket Holder

After weeks of rumors, Virginia Tech finally hired former Penn State coach James Franklin as its newest head football coach.  Hokie Nation is happy, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with this decision.

As a 1993 Virginia Tech grad, I was a student for Frank Beamer’s early struggles.  I watched the rise and peak of the program, and I’ve been there for the fall and the subsequent wallowing and middling.

Like everyone else, I’ve been waiting for the return to relevancy. I was hopeful with the Fuente hire, and when that went south, I was excited that Pry was brought in as the anti-Fuente.

Unfortunately, neither of those decisions panned out, and there we were at a point in our beloved school’s history where we just could not afford to swing and miss again.

Which is why the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors swung out of their shoes this time around.  Of course time will tell, but with the resume and pedigree that James Franklin possesses, this is initially deemed a grand slam hire.

Not everyone agrees with that sentiment, though, especially a large portion of the Nittany Lion faithful. Penn State fans have felt quite an ambivalence toward James Franklin for a few years now.  They liked that he won, but their frustrations with his ceiling caused them to lose patience, and a highly successful coach was abruptly fired.

My eldest son and my father-in-law, both Penn State graduates, have openly admitted that they can’t quite figure out how to feel about their former coach and his new position.  When I hear them talk about their mixed emotions, it gives vibes of someone in a long-term relationship who was jilted.

Even though Franklin did nothing to even remotely suggest he wanted out of State College, the fan base feels strongly that he let them down, especially knowing the rosters he has assembled over the years and his inability to win the big game.  The thought of Franklin going elsewhere and being more successful is a tough pill for them to swallow.

I know this from the reactions of my own family members.  As a Penn State season ticket holder, I also witnessed an insidious decay of the sentiments of Nittany Lion fans over recent years, low-lighted by some unfortunately ugly encounters with Franklin and students recently.

When my son entered Penn State in the fall of 2019, I purchased season tickets and have held on to them ever since.  For years, I have been tailgating in Lot 11 and sitting in the upper north end zone seats at Beaver Stadium, watching Franklin and his team win 10 games a season.  I have seen most of the White Outs since 2019, and I have been in awe of that stadium and its fans.

However, I have also heard a lot of criticism of James Franklin in that time.  Like any fanbase, the Penn Staters want to win, and when they do not, which has not been often recently, they find things to dissect.  Or complain about.

There has been an increase in rumblings recently, especially this year with their extremely high expectations, which kind of explains why Franklin was fired.  This may be a red flag for some, and if you talk to Penn State fans, they will lambaste Tech for hiring Franklin.

However, these are two programs that have been worlds apart for the past decade, so I do not think the complaints of Nittany Lion fans will translate to Hokie Nation.  Here are some of their greatest beefs and my take on why they are not concerns for us in Blacksburg.

Probably the loudest cry from State College, PA was that James Franklin could not win a big game.  This topic has been exhaustively discussed these past few days, and with good reason.  Franklin was 4-21 at Penn State against AP top 10 teams.  He was only 2-21 against top 6 teams.

That latter winning percentage is second-worst all time by an FBS head coach, second only to our very own Frank Beamer.  Let me take this moment to remind us all how much we revere Frank Beamer.  Despite that poor record against top teams, Beamer is probably the most beloved figure in Tech’s athletics history, and he has his own statue outside of Lane Stadium.

This is because of what Beamer did for the program.  He built it from nothing.  He elevated it to national relevance, made Virginia Tech football an annually ranked team, and created a family culture that still pervades today.  He also won a lot of games, reaching the double-digit mark 11 times over 13 years.  That consecutive 8-year streak of 10-win seasons is still an accomplishment that very few schools have ever matched.

James Franklin also wins a lot of games.  He went 9-4 in consecutive years at Vanderbilt.  His Penn State teams won ten or more games in seven of his eleven full seasons in State College.  He averaged 9.3 wins per year over ten of those terms (the 2020 Covid season is not included, for obvious reasons).

Franklin won the games he was “supposed” to win in the Big Ten.  He was 64-36 in league play over his career.  The ACC is not Big Ten.  He should be able to win in this league.

As for the “big game”?  The ACC does not have top five teams.  It has not for quite some time.  So right now that isn’t even a concern.  For Hokie Nation, the priority is getting back to national relevance, becoming an annually ranked team again.

If Franklin can do 80% of what he did at Penn State, the fan base will be happy.  If he can match it and win 9-10 games a year, he might end up with his own bronze statue at the other end of the Beamer’s bench!

Penn State fans will use Franklin’s record against ranked teams as their strongest support for this highly subjective statement.  But they easily forget all of the other wins that he has in amassing a 104-45 record at PSU.  Franklin’s teams have also scored 30 points or more 30 times over his last three full seasons!  The Lions scored 40 or more in 13 of those games, with several in the fifties and a few in the sixties.

It has been a while since the Lane Stadium scoreboard lit up that much in one season.  And Franklin did that over the last three!

While Franklin has had his fair share of close victories, he is only 4-4 in one-score games over the past three full years, with several of those losses coming against top-3 teams.  While these are not great numbers, they are a lot better than the 1-12 record that Virginia Tech had in one-score games over the same time period (and even fewer of those were against top five teams).

In looking at the entire body of work, I am confident in James Franklin’s ability to manage games.  His won-loss record supports this, and I would expect similar - if not better - result in the ACC over time.

Nittany Lions fans also complained that Franklin’s teams did not throw the ball enough.  I heard many a fan behind me in the Beaver Stadium upper deck scream for more passing.  Since Franklin runs more of a pro-style offense, his teams have been run heavy, and because of this, Nittany Lion fans have sometimes wanted more of an aggressive passing attack.

Honestly, that sounds familiar to the Beamer days, but I digress, since both coaches won a lot of ballgames with their run-heavy approaches.

Penn State has had some great runners over the years.  Saquon Barkley, Kaytron Allen, Nick Singleton, and even Trace McSorley…why wouldn’t the coach lean on these guys, especially when Franklin had a lot of future NFL linemen in the trenches?

Over the past decade, Virginia Tech has sometimes struggled to establish an offensive identity.  Under Franklin, expect the same kind of pro-style offense that leans on the run game.

Again, this is a subjective stance, likely affected by the lack of success against Ohio State, Michigan, and now Oregon.  It is true that Penn State struggled against that trio of teams, and that none of Franklin's quarterbacks led the Lions to victory over OSU and Oregon (the lone Franklin win against the Buckeyes came on the infamous “Block Six”).

No one can deny that Franklin brought talented quarterbacks to Happy Valley.  Christian Hackenberg, Trace McSorley, and Sean Clifford were all drafted into the NFL.  Current Lions QB and projected NFL draftee Drew Allar was the top rated high school quarterback and Franklin stole him from Ohio.  All four had careers that would have been SIGNIFICANTLY better than any Virginia Tech quarterback since Logan Thomas (Jerod Evans not included).

While it is a valid argument that Allar did not have the success that most anticipated, he still threw for almost 6,000 yards and connected on 49 touchdowns over his sophomore and junior seasons.  To give context, Ryan Willis is the last Hokie QB to throw for over 2500 yards, and that was in 2018!  (And Willis was a hot mess in 2019.)

In looking at the leading passers in Penn State history, Clifford sits at the top of the list with over 10,000 passing yards.  Less than a thousand yards behind him is McSorley.  Third is Hackenberg with almost 8500 yards, and fourth is Allar with 7402.  They are the starting quarterbacks for every one of Franklin’s years in State College.

McSorley won a Big Ten championship.  Clifford won a Rose Bowl.  Allar reached the Big Ten title game and the national playoff semifinals.  I’d say Franklin’s quarterbacks threw the ball plenty, and they did alright.

And I’d also say that I expect the quarterback room in Blacksburg to get better quickly, especially since a four-star quarterback decommitted from Penn State right after Franklin was hired and is now projected to commit to Virginia Tech.

James Franklin’s departure from Penn State was unfortunate, to say the least.  Despite years of success, fans and media dogged him about his record against top-ranked teams.  There were some times that were a little heated, and Franklin himself got testy, but can you blame him?

Imagine Mark Berman from the Roanoke Times badgering a Tech coach repeatedly about the same topic.  It gets old.  Especially when it overshadows the positives and the accomplishments, which were a-plenty in State College for the Franklin years.

As we learned with his introduction to Virginia Tech, James Franklin is a highly organized, detail-oriented, motivated coach.  He is all business, almost all of the time.  This seriousness was often misunderstood in State College, and PSU fans looked at Franklin as one who was a little bristly with the media.

Honestly, as a Tech fan, if he wins games, who cares what his personality is like at press conferences?

At his introduction at Virginia Tech, we saw him laugh, we saw him cry, and we saw him bring the passion.  He revealed parts of the human being that is behind the whistle, and it is clear that he wants to be at Virgina Tech and he wants to win.

Also, his players love him.  And he loves his players.  And that is probably more important than the wins and losses, because these young men will eventually leave Blacksburg for the real world, but they will always have the love and support from their coach.

So who cares how he interacts with the media?

James Franklin was not fired from Penn State for dereliction of duty.  Rather, he was let go because he did not meet the extremely high expectations of the Penn State administration and fan base.  PSU wants to play at Ohio State’s level and win conference and national championships.

That is not an issue in Blacksburg.  Hokie Nation just wants to be relevant again!  Give us 8-10 wins per year, annual top 20 rankings, and regular cracks at the conference title game, and we will be thrilled!

This might change ten years from now if we go 10-2 every year and never win a championship, but ya know, I’ll take ten wins a year for a decade with or without a title.  Sign me up for that right now.

He is 8-2 in his last ten white out games. Under Franklin, the White Out has become one of the biggest games in the nation each year. Ticket resales were over $400 for the most recent Oregon game.  I have been to several White Outs, and I can say with certainty that the Penn State student section is among the best student sections I’ve seen.  Ever.

If Franklin can build a winner in Blacksburg, he will galvanize the Hokie students - and fans alike - and Lane Stadium can regain its reputation as the Terrordome.

And all of this comes just in time for the next wave of conference alignment, which will likely coincide with several media contracts expirations in 2030.  Building a winning program now is paramount, not just for the potential realignment, but also to reap the financial gains of the new ACC media payouts, which reward teams for reaching more television viewers.

Bowl appearances will tie in to the financial benefits.  James Franklin has won more New Year’s Six bowls at Penn State (he’s 4-3) than Virginia Tech has won in its entire existence (Tech is 3-6 if we include the pre-NY6 Peach Bowl, 2-5 otherwise).  As a head coach, he has brought his teams to a bowl game every year except the COVID year, and that includes his three seasons at Vanderbilt.

Replicating even part of that bowl success in Blacksburg will not only result in more money, but it will have a ripple effect into recruiting as well.

The table is set, now James Franklin needs to cook so Hokie Nation can eat.

Despite all this excitement of the new hire, I must warn Hokie Nation, however, to be careful about expecting too much.  In each of Franklin’s first seasons at Vanderbilt and Penn State, he won six regular season games and went to a bowl.  That should be the starting goal for Hokie Nation.  Then we should hope to build from there.

We should not expect instant championship contention.  Playoff bids should be a hope, not a demand for next season.  This is a transformational hire - which means that things are changing in how the program is funded and how it is run.  The hope is that it pays off quickly, but for now at least, Hokie Nation should be happy with a bowl bid next year then continued improvement each season thereafter.

Honestly, this is a fanbase who is starving for wins, so if Franklin can just do 80% of what he did at Penn State in terms of victories, he will be a success in Blacksburg.  If he can match his production in State College, he could end up with a statue on the other side of that bench near Coach Beamer.

James Franklin does things the right way.  He is a builder of programs and a maker of men.  He will turn this ship around.

Hokie Nation, there are brighter days ahead!