How 18 Months Changed James Franklin's Career at Penn State

"We are getting the type of support at a level that I think this place demands and should have," the Penn State coach says.

Penn State coach James Franklin shakes hands with the fans upon team arrival prior to the game against the Washington Huskies at Beaver Stadium. / Matthew O'Haren-Imagn Images

If you rewind the clock just over a decade, it seemed almost impossible to imagine that Penn State and James Franklin would still be together 10 years later. Franklin, then a young coach rising through the ranks with a fairly robust history of changing jobs, was taking on a role you could easily imagine springboarding him to something bigger, better and not saddled with NCAA sanctions.

But that never happened.

Rewind only a few years ago, and Franklin’s name was a regular mainstay in the coaching carousel. That attention would mostly get leveraged into contract extensions and facility and/or other upgrades, but it wasn’t unreasonable to think Franklin could have left at the right opportunity.

For attentive followers of the program, it isn’t exactly breaking news that Franklin harbored some not-so-subtle frustrations with the combination of former President Eric Barron and Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Sandy Barbour. Administrators not blanketly saying yes to a football coach’s desires isn’t automatically a bad thing, but it’s safe to say that if Franklin had left, this would have been among the biggest motivating factors.

Fast forward to this week.

“I'm very, very proud of the progress we have made,” Franklin said Monday. “ I'm very, very appreciative of the board leadership over my 11 years here. I'm very appreciative of the presidents over my 11 years here. I'm very appreciative of the ADs. I will say this: In the last, I guess it's probably been three years with [President] Neeli [Bendapudi] and [Athletic Director] Pat [Kraft] and [Board of Trustees chair] Matt Schuyler and pretty soon [Incoming board chair David Kleppinger] it has changed.

“And, again, very appreciative of the support we've gotten over 11 years, but I would say in the last three years it's been different. And I would say specifically in the last year-and-a-half it's been different because the first year and a half, when you get on campus, you're just trying to kind of figure it all out. And once they were able to figure it all out, we are getting the type of support at a level that I think this place demands and should have.

“But we are getting the type of support in the last year-and-a-half through those people that we have not had here. So are there still things that need to be done? Yes. Yes. We'll be saying that for the rest of our time here because you guys know it's constantly a moving target.”

This isn’t the first time Franklin has offered up these sorts of comments. But every iteration is a reminder that the reasons Franklin might leave Penn State are dwindling. That is especially true when you consider the expanded playoffs and expanding conferences. At one point, the idea of Franklin going to USC made sense. The Trojans had a slightly easier road to the four-team playoff in the Pac-12, a big and more localized recruiting base and an LA culture that spoke to some of Franklin's charismatic sensibilities.

But now what? USC is forced to travel across the country to play the teams Franklin already is struggling to beat. Changing programs is no longer a promise that your problems will change. It just means your team will wear a different colored uniform when it loses to Ohio State.

If you look beyond the Big Ten, the number of obviously better, or even similar, jobs is limited. Alabama isn’t going to hire Franklin one day down the road, Clemson seems attached at the hip to Dabo Swinney, and your garden variety SEC team doesn’t come with fewer quality opponents on the schedule than what Penn State already has. Even if Franklin were to end up at Clemson, an expanded playoff and Penn State’s program consistency limits the degree to which Clemson’s slightly easier road is as much of an asset as it once was. All roads lead to the same kind of big game.

Zoom even further out, and there’s also absolutely zero evidence Franklin is interested in the NFL or that the NFL is interested in Franklin. In the end, the situation is this: There probably isn’t a program where, beyond a bigger NIL budget, Franklin would face markedly fewer challenges.

When you stop trying to get better on a daily and a yearly basis and you're not bold and aggressive with those things all the time, you can fall behind and you can fall significantly behind," Franklin said. "
So, yeah, there's still a lot of things that we have to get done. But we are closer, not even close, we are closer than we have been in my 11 years, not even close from a support standpoint and a commitment standpoint."

So where does that leave Penn State? 

Quite possibly in a place where the coach nobody expected to stick around for all that long ends up staying for a long time.

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Ben Jones has been covering Penn State athletics for 13 years, having been to countless home and road games for Nittany Lion sporting events spanning from the Rose Bowl to the NCAA Tournament. He's also the author of the book Happy Valley Hockey. You can read his work at https://benjonesonpennstate.substack.com and follow him on X (Twitter) at Ben_Jones88