On Sunday, the unfortunate yet fully expected news out of Penn State arrived when head football coach James Franklin was fired.
This season, Franklin couldn’t escape his critics who have long berated him for failing to win the big games at Penn St (he was 4-21 against top-10 opponents).
While last season ended with a loss to Notre Dame in the semi-final game of the College Football Playoffs, the best finish in his entire head coaching career, this season brought more frustration to the overall Penn State community.
2025 began with three straight wins for the no.3 ranked Nittany Lions. Then came the first big test of the year as no.6 Oregon rolled into town for a primetime national showdown.
After a boring three quarters, the fourth quarter saw a back and forth affair that pushed the game into overtime.
The first overtime resulted in a 24-24 tie and fans had hopes that the second overtime would produce the big win that had eluded Franklin’s teams for so long.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case as Oregon prevailed with a 30-24 2OT win.
While he received some flack for the loss, it wasn’t as damaging as the next two losses which saw Penn St fall to a winless UCLA, 42-37, followed by another humiliating loss at home to also-unranked Northwestern, 22-21.
The three straight losses, coupled with the embarrassing quality of the latter two, sealed Franklin’s fate.
While many will rejoice over his firing, it’s important not to forget what James Franklin did during his tenure in Happy Valley.
Franklin arrived at Penn State in 2014 after three successful seasons at Vanderbilt where he had a record of 24-15 and went 2-1 in bowl games.
At the time, Penn St was still reeling from the sexual abuse scandal involving long-time Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky that boiled over nationally in 2012 when Sandusky was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.
It was an embarrassing and painful period for the university, which was forced to admit that their legendary coach, Joe Paterno, had ignored the evils committed by Sandusky from as far back as 1976.
Paterno passed away in early 2012, a few months after Sandusky’s arrest, but the reputation of the legendary coach and the university was already marred.
The school was put on probation, fined $60 million and hit with a four-year postseason ban on participation in postseason play (2012-13 through 2015-16) and a reduction in scholarships.
In 2012, Bill O’Brien was hired as the team’s head coach and he went 15-9 over two seasons before leaving to become the head coach of the Houston Texans.
That’s when Franklin arrived from Tennessee.
Franklin was more than a former SEC head coach. He was a born, raised and educated Pennsylvanian who starred in college as a quarterback at DII East Stroudsburg University. After graduating in 1995, he stayed in the state and began his coaching career at Kutztown University before moving on to different programs.
So when he took the job in Happy Valley, he was returning home to help rebuild a program that was suffering from the black eye left by Paterno and Sandusky.
Franklin helped rebuild the program’s reputation, changed the perceptions of the university and successfully recruited bigtime talent including All-Americans Saquon Barkley, Micah Parsons and Abdul Carter.
While it’s true Franklin failed to win the big games, particularly against Ohio State and Michigan, it’s important we don’t overlook what he actually accomplished.
In 12 seasons, Franklin only had one losing season (2020 when they went 4-5 during the Covid shortened season) and he shared the 2016 Big 10 Coach of the Year award with Wisconsin’s Paul Chryst.
He led Penn State to 9 bowl games (4-5) and the CFP semifinal game last season.
Most significantly, he was the first Black head football coach in Penn St history and he built the program into a nationally ranked, top 10 team during his tenure.
So while he was ultimately fired for not winning the big games, James Franklin did for Penn State what it wanted and needed at a time when it was hurting, including 2016 when the school had paid out $92 million to settle 32 civil claims in the Sandusky scandal.
Franklin navigated the program through those dark times to once again become a nationally recognized program.
And for that he should always be celebrated and appreciated.
