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Penn State Football: What Leadership Looks Like

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Not in question is what James Franklin’s leadership looked like on Saturday in Bloomington, as day turned to night and his team — once again — snatched a loss from the jaws of victory. Consider:

The game management.

The special teams mistakes and misses, followed by more misses and mistakes.

Lamont Wade returning kicks.

A discombobulated Will Levis. Times two.

And, uncharacteristic for a Franklin team, a sustained undisciplined performance.

No doubt that Franklin — with a bachelor’s in psychology, a masters in educational leadership and a doctorate equivalent in coaching after a quarter century of college football and 80 victories in the SEC and the Big Ten — excels at planning, preparation and psychology.

But when the unaccounted for crap hits the fan — Michigan State, Ohio State, Ohio State, Kentucky, USC — can he lead in real time in the fourth quarter, when the game is on the line? And then take responsibility when the result is a loss?

Especially in the coming week, with No. 3 Ohio State looming and the crowd in Beaver Stadium Wite-outed and an expected paltry #2.07k on hand.

Can Franklin — and it is on him, more than anyone — lead his team, which has free-fallen to  No. 18, to respectability, if not a win this Saturday? (Speaking of polls: Penn State’s 63-straight times in the AP poll is officially in peril.)

A great coach puts his charges in a position to succeed. As a teacher this semester of two Penn State classes both large (105, attending both in person and on Zoom) and small (16 first-semester freshmen, meeting weekly outside), I can relate: When a student fails a test, doesn’t know an answer, misses an assignment date, I am to blame — now, more than ever with the vagaries of covid and multiple protocols and innumerous distractions.

If they succeed, it’s all them. If they fail, it’s on me. Now, more than ever — Franklin is in Year 25 of coaching, I am in Year 21 of teaching — is the time for leaders to be elite.

This week the onus will especially be on CJF, even if the Twitter explosion abates: In the opposite of the parlance of the covid day, can he take a negative test and turn into a positive?

• • •

‘If, as Kipling wrote, ‘you can keep your head,

when about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you;

but allowance for their doubting too…’

• • •

This is what leaders do (from the official Indiana-Penn State play-by-play summary):

INDIANA drive start at 2:30.

1-10, IND 25 — Penix, Michael sacked for a loss of 6 yards to IND14 (Toney, Shaka).

2-16, IND 19 — Penix, Michael sacked for a loss of 5 yards to IND19 (Toney, Shaka).

3-21, IND 14 — Timeout Indiana, clock 2:01.

3-21, IND 19 — Penix, Michael pass incomplete to Hednershot, P., QB hurry by Toney, Shaka.

4-21, IND 19 — Penix, Michael pass incomplete to Fryfogle, Ty.

45 plays, minus 11 yards, 0:43

PENN STATE drive start at 01:47.

This is what leaders say: “I don’t want anyone else to take this loss; this one is on me,” said gritty quarterback Sean Clifford after his two picks Saturday led to 10 Indiana points, tenfold the margin of victory of the Hoosier’s 36-35 OT win at home against Penn State. “That first half, two turnovers were unacceptable and both completely on me. I just feel like I definitely could have played better.’

This is how leaders take responsibility after a self-inflicted season-opening loss in extraordinarily challenging and unprecedented times: ‘Again, it starts with me and coaching better and making sure we play better next time,” said Bill O’Brien, after Penn State collapsed in its 2012 season opener against Ohio University, falling 24-14 after leading 14-3 at halftime of its first game after the Sandusky scandal and the firing of Joe Paterno. ‘We’ve got to be able to string plays together and (the) coaching on offense — it starts with me…’

These are sacrifices leaders make: From USA Today: “Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney has agreed to forgo $1.25 million in scheduled compensation due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s financial impact on the university and its athletics department. …Swinney will give up a $1 million retention payment that would become payable if he remains the Tigers’ head coach through Jan. 1, 2021, and he will not receive a $250,000 raise that had been set to take effect on Jan. 1. Taken together, the reductions represent a decrease of just over 13% of the $9.375 million that Swinney was due to make during the university’s 2021 fiscal year, which ends June 30.’

• • •

Leadership is patient, leadership is kind. It does not envy, does not boast, it is not proud. Leadership is not rude, not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Leadership does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Leadership always protects, always hopes, always perseveres.

Leadership does not go on Twitter at 4:57 p.m. on Saturday, as Micah Parsons did, and ask: ‘Yoo WTF is going on!!’

• • •

Leading statistics:

In the nine non-conference games that Penn State played to open the 2017, 2018 and 2019 seasons, the Nittany Lions were 9-0 and outscored their opponents 441-98 — an average margin of victory of 49-5 against Akron, Pitt, Georgia State, Appalachian State, Pitt, Kent State, Idaho, Buffalo and Pitt.

At Penn State, Franklin’s teams are 11-9 after a loss (not counting losses in bowl games), and 5-2 in the last three seasons.

• • •

Early one quiet Monday morning in the autumn of 2018, a scant 34 hours after Penn State lost 27-26 to Ohio State on the ill-fated Fourth and 5 call, I ran into an upperclassman, who was a respected and soft-spoken leader of the football team, on campus.

We talked about his class that morning, the heartbreak of the loss, his lingering anger — at not just the defeat but his head coach’s comments after the game. The player, all winner and zero whiner in the classroom and on the field, brought up that last point, not me.

Here is what Franklin famously said after the game:

‘The reality is, we’ve gone from an average football team, to a good football team, to a great football team. But we’re not an elite team yet.The work that it’s going to take to get to an elite program is going to be just as hard as the ground and the distance that we’ve already traveled to get there. We’re going to break through, and be an elite program, by doing all the little things. We’re a great program. We lost to an elite program. And we’re that close.

‘It’s all the details, it’s all the little things. It’s finding a way to overcome adversity consistently. It’s going to class consistently. It’s getting to meetings in time. It’s having your phone turned off during meetings. It’s settling for a B in a class when you could have gotten an A. It’s taking notes in every single meeting… Those little things that we have let skip by? It’s one point last year, it’s one point this year. It’s not happening any more.’

(Penn State lost 28-17 to Ohio State in 2019.)

Those comments reminded me in reverse fashion of my dad, an old-school, hard-knocks high school football coach in Central PA for decades who took losses so personal that when his Palmyra High School team lost to a rival Hershey team coached by a former player, it literally killed him in the locker room after the game. My dad, Fred Poorman, would often say: Point with your thumb, not your finger.

On that Monday post-Ohio State, the player — a good and earnest student and a model citizen — was hurting. ‘What do you mean we’re not elite? We were as good as Ohio State. We know that. And not going to class?’ he smirked.

It should be noted that this player was just leaving an 8 a.m. class. On a Monday. After the late-Saturday night game.

‘That isn’t why we lost,’ he concluded.

• • •

What’s past is prologue:

Column A: Ten penalties, three missed field goals (albeit one from 57 yards, though perhaps one more quick play would’ve have made that doable), two interceptions, a lost fumble, scoreless drives of 12 plays and 5:41 and 15 plays and 7:39, a game (and more?)-ending injury to Noah Cain, zero tackles by Brandon Smith, and a targeting call that erased a fumble and any appearance by linebacker Jesse Luketa in the first half vs. Ohio State.

Column B: A 40-20 Penn State time advantage in possession, 488 yards of total offense, 27 first downs. Eleven catches for 154 yards and TDs by highly-reliable veterans Pat Freiermuith and Jahan Dotson, and six more catches by three freshmen. A total of 119 rushing yards and a heroic and fancy touchdown run by Clifford. The defensive work of Toney and Joey Porter Jr. Five touchbacks and the steady 39.7-yard punting by Jordan Stout.

So, which Penn State will show up on Saturday in Beaver Stadium?

Will the difference between Weak 1 and Week 2 be like day and night? Or, will Day and the Buckeye quarterback formerly known as A Penn State Verbal Commit have a fields day?

For Penn State, where will the leadership come from this week and on Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with GameDay ensconced in the stadium, a nation watching and the Big Ten East division already on the line?

The Nittany Lions have eight captains, a leadership council that typically includes two dozen players, 10 assistant coaches of which four now have their first Penn State game under the belts. They all have to do their part.

Among the captains, four — Clifford, Freiermuth, Jonathan Sutherland and Michal Menet — are in their second season as officially anointed leaders. Toney, whose insight and savvy are as lethal as his pass-rush skills, will no doubt lend his voice. And Wade always speaks his mind.

It is their team.

‘As coaches, we always know when we’re going to have a good team,’ Terry Smith, the longtime assistant head and a co-captain and star of the 1991 Nittany Lion squad that finished No. 3 in the nation, once said. ‘It’s when the players are controlling the locker room. It’s not when the coaches are going in there.”

So, count on them to take care of the Penn State locker room this week.

The playing field and, especially what happens there in the fourth quarter?

That is James Franklin’s responsibility.