Penn State's James Franklin Talks Sign-Stealing in College Football

Without discussing allegations involving Michigan, Franklin explains how the Nittany Lions address sign-stealing.

Penn State coach James Franklin said his team "made some changes" to its offensive and defensive signals during the bye week, a common in-season practice among college football teams. Franklin did not attribute the changes to the alleged sign-stealing operation at Michigan but did say "it magnifies it."

"For us that's something that we always are looking at," Franklin said. But obviously, with some of the things that are going on right now, it magnifies it."

Franklin did not address the Michigan situation specifically Tuesday when asked how Penn State has addressed the allegations internally but did discuss sign-stealing in general. A suspended Michigan staff member, analyst Connor Stalions, is alleged to have conducted in-person scouting activities to study opposing teams' signals. ESPN reported that Stalions purchased tickets for games involving at least 12 Big Ten schools over the past three seasons, including Saturday's Penn State-Ohio State game.

Franklin said he would not "get into what's going on at that other school and the things that are going on." However, Franklin did say that Penn State takes care to disguise its signals and made some changes during the bye week before playing UMass.

"I think in general, we're always aware of how we signal, are we disguising it," Franklin said. "What happens is, you get to after games, and you feel like you called a very unpredictable call in a certain situation, and they're in the perfect defense for it. You are sitting there saying, well, how is that? What would ever make you play cover two on 4th-and-1, and we're in the heavy personnel group? But they're in it, and you have a shot called there.

"Those things kind of make you second-guess, and you kind of go back and look at those things and what you need to do to disguise it. If it happens once, that's one thing, but if it happens over and over, then you're aware of it. For us that's something that we always are looking at, but obviously with some of the things that are going on right now, it magnifies it."

Franklin also wondered whether the NFL model of having certain players, notably the quarterback, wear communication devices in their helmets would be effective in college.

"I see a lot of people talking about going to the NFL system with the headsets, and I understand that," Franklin said. "It really doesn't solve this issue. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but if college offenses are going to decide not to huddle, you still have to be able to get the information communicated to the receivers, to the tight end. Maybe you can verbally communicate it to the [offensive line], which a lot of people do, but how does everybody else get it?

"So it's either the coaches are signaling from the sideline or the quarterback is signaling from the field, and you still have some of the same issues unless you decide to huddle, which I think you saw us huddle more on Saturday than we typically do."

Check out the video above for more from Franklin on sign-stealing.

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