James Franklin is undoubtedly always going to be a polarizing figure at Penn State.
No matter how many games he wins, no matter how many upsets he’s a part of, people aren’t going to ever fully embrace him.
Really, it isn’t his fault. James Franklin is a CEO, something written a million times before and far from anything insightful at this point. But it’s a management style that clashes with the traditional notion a football coach is the guy calling the plays, getting dirty in the trenches a few days before a big game.
That sort of thing is never really going to jibe with the DNA which makes up a reasonably conservative, central Pennsylvanian base. This isn’t a matter of right or wrong, simply two things not quite going together.
You can see it too, a reluctance to give Franklin his due as Penn State rides a four-game winning streak that just so happens to include one of the biggest wins in program history.
Joe Moorhead is credited for what the offense has done, while Brent Pry is praised for taking a crippled defense and somehow still winning with it. Franklin’s public stance has been that of ‘hands off’ and even if that isn’t entirely true, he seems content to give those two the credit for what has gone well.
In turn it leaves Franklin with little room to receive his own praise. It’s an odd thing to contemplate that there isn’t a moment in Penn State’s upset over Ohio State that you can point to and say ‘James Franklin had a hand in that.’ There isn’t a challenge or a decision that changed the game. There is Pry’s defense, a few good moments by Moorhead’s offense and Marcus Allen jumping higher than seems humanly possible and Grant Haley being in the right place at the right time.
There isn’t a lot of James Franklin.
So that keeps him open to critics, who are largely unimpressed by three wins over teams Penn State should have beaten anyway and an upset that Franklin was present for but whose influence on is murky at best.
And that’s fine.
All of those things are true, or at least there is a reasonable amount of accuracy to be had there. And that’s probably okay.
For as much as he might break the mold of a pure ‘football coach’ , he has been an increasingly effective CEO that routinely doesn’t get enough credit for his football IQ. And for as much as people don’t like to hear ‘young team’ and ‘trust the process’ over and over he hasn’t proven to be all that wrong about that either. Penn State is objectively young, generally injured and in a situation where the fast forward button doesn’t exist.
Off the field Penn State’s facilities have drastically improved while recruiting continues to be nationally relevant, both things spearheaded by Franklin. Perhaps most importantly, Franklin made what appears to be one of the most important hires in the program’s recent history by bringing Moorhead into the fold. Equally important, he made one of the most important retentions in simply promoting Pry to defensive coordinator.
The result is a program tangibly moving forward. The quality of play has unequivocally trended upwards and the state of the program’s physical infrastructure has as well. The only area that Franklin hasn’t been overly impressive in is the area he has never claimed to be in charge of. He isn’t trying to be Chip Kelly, he isn’t trying to be Joe Moorhead and he certainly isn’t trying to be Bill O’Brien or Joe Paterno. But as he said a few years ago deep into a Coaches Caravan stop, he doesn’t like recruiting — he likes winning.
And Penn State is winning.
The point here isn’t to absolve Franklin of his shortcomings or to say he’s the gold standard of coaching. He has plenty of the first and is far from the second.
But for the majority of his tenure at Penn State he has been viewed under a microscope that hasn’t been adequately adjusted to the kind of coach Franklin is. If Franklin’s Xs and Os in-game don’t impress you now, you’ll never be impressed because he’ll never be that coach. Conversely, if Moorhead and Pry are building the on-field product and you like what they’re doing, Franklin deserves the credit for being the big picture architect of what Penn State is trying to build in the first place. Because Franklin hasn’t, strictly speaking, been the traditional coach Penn State fans are used to doesn’t mean his employment is a detriment to the rebuilding of the program. If anything his employment is largely why the program is being rebuilt, not treading water.
Maybe Penn State will never win the Big Ten with Franklin at the helm. But right now as it stands in early November, two years and change after his hiring, Penn State is looking at a real chance for its first 10-win season since 2009 and already has a Top 20 ranking.
So from Point A to Point B, Penn State has gotten better.
Franklin may not be calling the plays, but he’s certainly calling the shots. He doesn’t get much credit for that.
And it’s probably about time he did.
