Penn State's James Franklin Offers Glimpse Into His Coaches Poll Voting Process

Franklin is among the 55 college football coaches who vote in the weekly poll. Here's how he approaches it.

Penn State coach James Franklin stands on the field during a warm up prior to the game against the Bowling Green Falcons at Beaver Stadium. / Matthew O'Haren-Imagn Images

Penn State ranks third in this week's Coaches Poll, for which James Franklin is among the voters. Technically. How deeply he dives into his weekly ballot is anyone's guess.

Still, Franklin is part of the process to determine the weekly Coaches Poll Top 25, and during his Monday press conference ahead of the Wisconsin game, the Penn State coach was asked about his process and his strategy for voting with his team in mind. Franklin addressed the topic pretty squarely. Here's what he said.

"Yeah, it [the weekly process] doesn't vary a whole lot," Franklin said. "Basically I think Sunday mornings that's got to be in I think by 12 p.m.. [Former Penn State football staffer] Michael Hazel [now at Virginia Tech] used to put this together for us. Now Will Reiman [director of Penn State football research and strategy] does that. He puts it together for us. We typically have the AP Poll last week, the Coaches Poll and then how we voted last week. They're usually always pretty consistent for the most part, to be honest with you. I look at that, and then I look at whoever lost that week, whoever won that week that was in the top 25, who should come out of the top 25, who should go into the top 25 based on the previous weeks.

"I'm also a big proponent of the power conferences just based on the competition that they play week in and week out and the challenges that come with that. But for the most part it's very, very similar to
what you see out there publicly. There's very little differences between the AP poll, the Coaches Poll and our poll that we put out every single week."

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Asked about how he votes regarding Penn State, Franklin reiterated his point about consistency.

"Yeah, the same way we look at everybody else's. Typically, again, it's pretty consistent, right? I think all three of us had it ranked exactly the same way this past week," he said. "There's sometimes where Penn State is voted lower than what other maybe publications have us ranked, and there's a few times where we've been ranked a little bit higher. Obviously it all comes out in the averages."

The Coaches Poll consists of 55 voters from across the country representing Power 4 and Group of 5 teams. According to poll policy, "the panel is chosen by random draw, conference by conference plus independents, from a pool of coaches who have indicated to the American Football Coaches Association their willingness to participate." The ballots are not made public until the final poll of the season.

Penn State. No. 3 in this week's Coaches Poll, visits Wisconsin on Saturday night at Camp Randall Stadium. Kickoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC.

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Penn State on SI is the place for Penn State news, opinion and perspective on the SI.com network. Publisher Mark Wogenrich has covered Penn State for more than 20 years, tracking three coaching staffs, three Big Ten titles and a catalog of great stories. Follow him on X (or Twitter) @MarkWogenrich.