1-0. 1-0. 1-0.
Purdue, Purdue, Purdue.
If form holds in the coming days, we will see a Tweet from @coachjfranklin featuring some permutation of one of those messages. Maybe both.
It has been a constant in James Geoffrey Franklin’s 3,144 days in Happy Valley.
Through three university presidents and three athletic directors and five offensive coordinators. Through four contracts and $50 million in payouts. And through a bell curve of 101 games and eight college football seasons — a 14-12 start, a 39-9 burst and a 14-13 recent run.
However, Franklin’s 1-0 mantra is not indigenous to his time at Penn State. James was already a One-And-Oh guy at his previous institution, Vanderbilt.
No matter the school, Franklin’s Tweets and 1-0 single-mindedness say the same thing: That his football players and staff need to think about only one thing: The game in front of them.
The 2022 particulars will be interesting when Franklin sends out his first signature Tweet of the new school year, since the season opener is next Thursday, Sept. 1 against Purdue in West Lafayette, Ind. Will he opt to go with the 1-0 or repeat the opponent’s name ad nauseum or both? Neither?
The last time Penn State faced the Boilermakers, in 2019, Franklin Tweeted out 13x “Purdue” the Sunday night of game week. The morning of the game he excitedly took to Twitter with the triple-messaged “Purdue, Purdue, Purdue!!! 1-0!!! #WeAre.”
Penn State won handily, 35-7.
By my count, Franklin’s unofficial Twitter record for foe repetition is 29 — set with 29x “Mich St” at 4:03 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018. Penn State lost four days later, 21-17.
Of more recent verbose vintage is the 25x “Minnesota!” he Tweeted in advance of the Nittany Lions’ Nov. 9, 2019 game in Minneapolis, which PSU entered 8-0 and ranked No. 5, while the No. 13 Gophers were also 8-0. Interestingly, in the days leading up to that game, Franklin was asked about his signature 1-0 phrase.
“I think maybe early on, guys were, you know, saying ‘1-0,’ but not really living it and believing it,” Franklin replied. “I think our guys are now. The reality is you only have so much energy to spread around.
“Our belief is if you can focus all your energy on the task at hand, you’re going to be the most successful doing it. A lot of the other things are outside of your control, anyway, so why would you even do it? You’re just going to frustrate yourself and spend energy on things that won’t help. That’s what we try to do.
“The world is complex enough. The university and the classes and the challenges are complex enough. Their families and home lives are complex enough. We want to try to make it as focused and as clean and as efficient as we possibly can. And, you know, we have found that this is a very useful tool in doing that.”
A few days after Franklin’s comments, Minnesota won, 31-26, as Sean Clifford threw three interceptions and Minnesota QB Tanner Morgan, guided by Gopher OC Kirk Ciarrocca, threw three TDs. (The duo is reunited for the Gophers’ Whiteout visit on Oct 22.)
Since that game, Penn State has been 1-0 fourteen times and 0-1 thirteen times.
Earlier in that pre-Minny week, Franklin also said this: “The reality is, you can have these philosophies all you want, but you’d better live them. You’d better ingrain them and then you also better be willing to change.”
• • •
CHANGE? HUH. So, will 1-0 go by the wayside in 2022?
I doubt it.
Throughout the summer, during various media availabilities, Franklin’s players frequently repeated the 1-0 line. A few weeks ago, I asked safety and newly-named co-captain Ji’Ayir Brown what the team’s goal was for 2022.
“We don’t have no goal for this season,” Brown replied. “We are going to come out and play every game, you know, 1-0 mentality. One practice at a time. One day at a time. One game at a time. We’re not trying to set no bar on ourselves, because once you set a bar, I feel like you put limitations on yourself and there’s no limitations where we can go.”
OK, I asked, is Penn State a championship caliber team this year?
“Yes,” answered Brown.
Penn State cornerback coach Terry Smith agrees. Kinda. A former Penn State co-captain himself, Smith is the only current Nittany Lion assistant coach who has been with Franklin through Year 9. The man the other coaches call OG, out of respect for his spot as the oldest member of the coaching staff, knows the drill.
Like Brown, Smith knows how to repeat the 1-0 line, but also walk the Lion line in sharing how good he thinks Penn State will be in 2022.
“I think this team has the chance to be pretty special,” Smith said on Thursday. “You know, things are headed in that direction. We just got to remain consistent and go through every day with the same mindset.”
What does “pretty special” look like, I asked Smith.
“You have the opportunity to go 1-0 each week,” Smith said, getting back to the party line while setting the stage to go bold. “We feel like if we take care of our business and minimize the mental mistakes and do all the things that don’t beat yourself, we feel like we can beat anyone in the country.”
Last question: Does the team have a preseason goal for 2022?
Yeah,” he said. “To go 1-0 each week. Right? So the first game is Purdue. The goal is to beat Purdue.”
• • •
THINGS ARE HANDLED DIFFERENTLY elsewhere in the Big Ten East division. Especially with two opponents who are a combined 12-4 against Penn State and Franklin since 2014. Opponents, who, when their head coaches were asked last month, didn’t list beating Penn State as a seminal season goal in 2022. Ouch.
At Big Ten media days a few weeks ago, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day and Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh — separately — laid out their teams’ goals for 2022.
Day: “Maybe some places 11-2 with a Rose Bowl victory (which Ohio State did in 2021) is a good year. It isn’t at Ohio State. Our three goals are to beat the team up north, win the Big Ten championship, win the national championship.”
Harbaugh: “Our goals would be to beat Ohio State and Michigan State in the same year, win the Big Ten championship and win the national championship. Those are our four goals.”
Brown, who was one of three Penn State player representatives at the same media event, was not impressed.
“That’s great for them,” Brown said, “but they aren’t part of Penn State football. I could really care less about their goals and stuff. I’m more worried about my team, how to build my team and get my team ready for games.”
• • •
IT’S NOT THAT FRANKLIN has yet to articulate what his team’s goals are for 2022. He has. Just not for you and me.
When I asked Clifford about the pros and cons of what Day and Harbaugh had to say, the 24-year-old quarterback — in his sixth season, and his fourth as a starter and team captain — offered some mature and insightful perspective. Which is par for the Sean course.
“Everybody talks about the goals. We even talk about the goals,” Clifford said last week (his emphasis on “we,” not mine). “Every year we talk about what is our long-term goal. And that’s always to win a Big Ten championship, to win a national championship. And, you know, everybody has their individual goals as well.
“But that’s only a one-time conversation. We had that conversation. And then it’s all about going 1-0, getting better one day at a time. The advantage is definitely having that constant reminder. But the disadvantage is sometimes you think about the future too much, when realistically you have to live in the present.
“So,” Clifford added, “I love Coach Franklin’s mindset. I love what he does with our program with the 1-0 mentality. I think it’s true. I think it’s the best way to look at it.”
Part of Franklin’s tight message control is to exhort his people to not say the silent part out loud. At least not the media. You can tell offensive line coach Phil Trautwein, now in his third season at Penn State, is still new to the ways of the Franklin’s 1-0 world.
When asked about Clifford a few weeks ago, Trautwein responded, then veered off the 1-0 highway and took the ramp that clearly led to his days back at the University of Florida, when he was a two-time captain, Tim Tebow’s personal protector and an integral part of the Gators’ national championship teams in 2006 and 2008.
“We have all the trust in the world in Sean and want him to be all-conference this year and all that good stuff,” Trautwein said. “But I think we want to win the Big Ten championship and a national championship.”
