Auld(-22) Lang Syne to a Disappointing 2023 Penn State Football Season as Franklin Collects a Big Payday

James Franklin gets paid to handle the moving parts — in good times and in bad. In fact, that is in essence the job of head coach in college football these days. And he gets paid quite well to do so. 

And, in Franklin’s 10 years at Penn State — he was hired Jan. 11, 2014, succeeding Bill O’Brien, who was an admirable and undervalued 15-9 in two seasons — there have been many good times. He is 88-39 as a head coach, with one Big Ten championship and three wins in a New Year’s Six bowl. (Though not on Saturday.)

Under his watch, Penn State regularly packs Beaver Stadium beyond capacity. The Nittany Lions ranked No. 2 in attendance in 2023, trailing only Michigan. Three of the top six Beaver Stadium crowds came this past season.

Franklin recruits well, though not elite. According to On3, the Nittany Lions have averaged 14th in the country over the past four recruiting classes (19, 7, 14, 15).

He’s built up the Penn State football facilities, spending over $100 million, and he’s built a prodigious staff (I counted 73 full-time football employees in a group shot on photo day in Beaver Stadium).

And, he runs a clean and reputable program — worth countless dollars in this day and age.

In Franklin’s decade at Penn State, fellow Big Ten schools like the aforementioned Michigan, Michigan State, Maryland, Iowa, Northwestern and Indiana (which resulted in new PSU DC Tom Allen ascending to the Hoosiers’ head coach’s position) have all operated under the veil of scandal.

But…

It’s been a largely unsatisfying season for many Penn State fans, though the Nittany Lions were 10-3 and will likely finish in the top 15 (they entered the bowl season No. 10). Their three losses were all lackluster, especially and largely — the pits of the PSU defense in the Peach aside — on the offensive side.

Penn State mostly staggered down the stretch in 2023, going 4-3, losing pieces and parts and fans while sputtering oil all along the way, as its uber-highly-touted young quarterback seemingly regressed before our very eyes. Penn State and Franklin seem farther away from being Elite than was ever the case in late 2016, 2017 or 2018.

And look out. Behemoths Oregon, Washington and (potentially…holy crap, Miller Moss) USC are coming. UCLA? They’ll continue to chip away.

These days, college football is a big-time cash business. And Penn State is not immune to that. Its athletic department will soon pull in $200 million a year. So, as the year ends and we all do an accounting of 2023 in myriad ways, let’s take a look at the Nittany Lions through green- (and not rose-) tinted glasses.

Let’s start with Franklin’s big payday, win, lose or draw.

1. $500,000. A cool half-million. That’s what Franklin gets paid on New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, for being employed by Penn State. It’s a retention bonus, part of his latest contract.

2. That’s not to be confused with the $300,000 bonus he received for taking Penn State to a New Year’s Six bowl, in this case the Peach Bowl — which the Nittany Lions lost in somewhat disheartening fashion to an Ole Miss team that outperformed Penn State on the field and the sideline, 38-25. (Some coaches get a bonus for winning these games; Franklin’s contract is drawn up so he gets paid for just being there.)

2a. Did Franklin actually get a big check on Saturday? No. Penn State employees — of which I am one, full disclosure — got paid on Friday, so Franklin may have received both bonuses along with his normal monthly take-home of $583,333.

3. Also receiving bowl bonuses: Penn State football assistants and staffers, to the tune of about 15% of their salary, and Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft, who received $50,000.

3a. Not receiving bowl bonuses: The players.

3b. True: The players receive a full scholarship, tuition, room and board and innumerous perks, worth a couple hundred thousand dollars over the course of 3-5 years. So, they are certainly compensated for their work. But other than a couple hundred bucks for per diem, no cash. That will change in the next few years.

4. $9,085,000. Those bonuses pushed Franklin’s 2023 compensation to this new height, according to my math.

4a. That is the going rate for handling “the moving parts” of big-time college football, on and off the field, at what was Franklin’s 2023 rate of $1,037 an hour — 24/7/365. It’s an important number I’ll share on Day One of my “Intro the Sports Industry” when Penn State starts classes on Jan. 8; it gives on-campus context to the dollars and sense of what we will be talking about for the ensuing 15 weeks.

5. The $9 mil-plus would rank Franklin in the top 10 of the highest-paid college football coaches, right up there with the Peach Bowl victor, Lane Kiffin ($9 million). This is according to USA Today’s 2022-23 salary survey found here: sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/salaries/football/coach.

5a. Franklin’s number includes a base salary of $7 million, the aforementioned bonuses, access to insurance cash, private aircraft hours (valued conservatively at $5,000 per hour) and an annual car stipend of $10,000.

6. The $64 million question? How much has Franklin made since he was hired as Penn State’s head coach on Jan. 11, 2014? The answer: $63,977,500.

6a. That is how much I estimate Franklin has made since he was hired just short of 10 years ago. That is $727,272.727 per victory. He is now on his fourth contract. Announced on Nov. 23, 2021, it’s a 10-year-year, $85 million deal – plus the possibility of performance bonuses – that runs through Dec. 31, 2031. His other contracts with Penn State were announced Aug. 18, 2017, and Dec. 6, 2019.

7. Franklin’s buyout will be $64 million, should Penn State choose to part ways with him “without cause” at any time in the calendar year of 2024. (Don’t you love the sublime symmetry of numbers?)

7a. The formula is “Current Year (Base + Supplemental + Loan) x number of remaining contract years.” That’s $500,000 + $6,500,000 + $1,000,000 x 8, or $64 million. Eight more seasons.

7b. If Franklin opts to leave — “voluntary, to assume NFL/Collegiate Coaching position,” per the contract — he will owe Penn State $2 million if he leaves in 2024 or 2025, and then $1 million 2026-2030.

7c. See the publicly-released portion of the contract here: gopsusports.com/documents/2021/11/23/Franklin_Contract_2021.pdf

8. Franklin countless times in 2023 brought up how he is finally “in alignment” with Penn State’s president, AD and Board of Trustees. Seems to me his alignment was pretty good with the previous leadership when it came to his contract. Former AD Sandy Barbour re-negotiated Franklin’s contract three times in 51 months.

9. What will Franklin’s bonus structure be in the succeeding years (2024-2031) if Penn State makes the 12-team playoff? His latest contract, at least the parts made public when he signed the deal, is not clear. How could that have happened — folks knew a 12-team playoff was very likely coming?

9a. His contract includes bonuses for “winning the CFP championship game ($800,000); being CFP runner-up ($500,000); (an) appearance in one of the four bowl games that are a part of the CFP rotation, but not one of the two National Semifinal bowl games played that year ($300,000).”

9b. Will one of the four non-CFP games be converted to CFP games? And what about winning multiple playoff games? It is possible that a team, like Penn State, could be ranked No. 12 and run the table, winning four games — including the championship game — on the way to the national championship. Is that 4 x $300,000?

10. And talk about opt-outs, especially when — right now — there is no additional compensation to the players for playing in the CFP. There will be 12 regular season games, a potential league title game and the possibility of four more games (assuming a loss in the title game, since the Big Ten Conference champ will get a first-round bye).

10a. That’s 17 games in all. You’re telling me today’s Power 5 football player won’t want to get paid for all of those extra games? Not the ones I know, and I don’t blame them. It is this simple: They will get paid.

11. Penn State will spend about $4 million for its offensive coordinator spot in 2024. It will owe fired OC Mike Yurcich about $1.6 million in severance in 2024; it will pay (or already paid) $700,000 to the University of Kansas to buy out Andy Kotelnicki’s contract; and it will pay $1.6 million to Kotelnicki.

11a. About that Kotelnicki contract: He signed a five-year deal for $5.75 million with Kansas in December 2022. (He had been making $500,000 a year.) Details are here: https://www.kansascity.com/sports/college/big-12/university-of-kansas/article270726717.html

Then, on Nov. 30, 2023, he signed a four-year, $7.1 million guaranteed contract with Penn State. He tripled his salary, and more, in a year. Hmmm, a reverse. Quite the play-caller.

12. Penn State also had to pay former OC Kirk Ciarrocca nearly $900,000 in severance payments after the 2020 season, when Franklin fired him — so he could hire Yurcich. Who he then fired. Two OCs in four seasons. That’s on the one HC. 

13. Tom Allen’s contract with Penn State to be its new defensive coordinator is a three-year, $4.8 million deal. That’s after Allen pocketed a buy-out from Indiana to the tune of a whopping $15.75 million. I wonder how Allen’s former assistant coaches and ex-staffers, who also got the axe at Indiana, made out?

14. Penn State football is at a crossroads in 2024. Four new teams in the Big Ten (two them elite, one with the potential to be great, and the fourth simply good), continued NIL struggles, expanded playoffs, a new OC and DC, an exodus of players from the nation’s top defense, an offense that is dysfunctional.

15. Momentum is not great. Penn State went 4-3 over its last seven games and is now 0-4 vs. the SEC in bowl games under Franklin. Pre-Franklin, Penn State was 9-7 vs. SEC foes in bowl games. Since 2015:

15b. During the second half of the Peach Bowl telecast on ESPN, sideline reporter Quint Kessenich said, “The vibe of the Penn State sideline is one of malaise.”

16. There are problems at the Nittany Lion quarterback position. We’ll let the super-smart Louis Riddick, a Pennsylvania native and former NFL player and exec who called the Peach Bowl for ESPN, explain. He offered these words when PSU QB2 Beau Pribula was on the screen: “Do they start from scratch next year and is it a quote unquote ‘open competition’? I think everything is on the table as far as it goes with the passing game.”

17. Penn State trailed 20-17 at halftime against Ole Miss. It was the seventh time since the 2020 season the Nittany Lions entered the locker room trailing; most were close contests. And the sixth time they ended the game in the same fashion. So, they are 1-6 when behind at halftime over the past four seasons. Game day coaching matters. By season:

18. The wide receiver position is a mess. The two portal acquisitions in 2023 — Dante Cephas and Malik McClain — caught just 28 passes for 317 yards in 13 games…and none vs. Ole Miss after having an entire season to get acclimated to WR coach Marques Hagans, the Nittany Lion offense and its quarterback. 

18a. Penn State’s top two WRs disappointed over the final four games — figuratively and literally. Cephas did not play a snap vs. Ole Miss and KeAndre Lambert-Smith was targeted just once. Combined, over the final four games they caught seven passes for 75 yards. Horrid. Cephas was 5 for 47; KLS, who entered Peach Bowl with 37 career starts — including five as far back as 2020 — had one catch vs. Michigan and one vs. Michigan State down the four-game stretch.

18b. Not a very good first season for Hagans. He is the fifth WR coach in 10 seasons under Franklin — himself a former WR coach in the NFL and college.

19. Since beating Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game back in 2016, Penn State is 1-13 against Top 10 teams. (Note: Ole Miss was ranked No. 11.) That sole win came in last year’s Rose Bowl, 35-21, against a Utah team that lost its veteran starting quarterback in the third quarter.

20. Franklin overall vs. Top 10 opponents: 3-16; as a Top 10 team vs. a Top 10 opponent: 2-7

21. Franklin vs. Top 25 opponents: 13-25 overall, 13-20 since 2016, 4-11 since 2020.

22. Penn State’s 2024 schedule: