It was a lesson in late-season coaching that James Franklin will never forget.
And one that he put into real-life practice at Vanderbilt with resounding success.
In 2001, Franklin was the wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator at Maryland. (In all, he was at Maryland in 2000-04, ’08-10.)
The previous year, he had been hired by Terps head coach Ron Vanderlinden, the former Penn State linebackers coach now at Air Force. After a 5-6 season in 2000, Vanderlinden was fired and Ralph Friedgen came from Georgia Tech to take over.
Maryland almost ran the table in Friedgen’s first season, losing only at Florida State, 52-31. Still, the Terrapins finished the regular season 10-1 and ranked No. 6 in the country. They were ACC champs – their first conference championship since 1985 and their first winning season since 1995. They earned a trip to face Florida in the BCS Orange Bowl, their first bowl appearance since 1990.
Things looked good. For Friedgen. For Franklin. For the Terps.
Sure, Florida was ranked No. 5, but the Terps were riding high, having won their last three games by 55 points. You’d think that warranted some confidence in the team to the point where Friedgen would allow his players to enjoy, at least a little, the fruits of their labor in Miami. Not so, at least not right off the bat.
“I’ll never forget the one year we played in the BCS Orange Bowl and we had the same practice for the bowl game that we had for camp,” Franklin recalled after Penn State’s practice on Wednesday. “We landed and never went to the hotel. We went straight to the field and did two-a-days.”
Franklin was only 29 years old then, but Maryland was already his sixth stop as a college football coach – preceded by Kutztown, his alma mater East Stroudsburg, James Madison, Washington State and Idaho State. In his first seasons as an assistant, Franklin’s teams were a combined 29-35. They may have been losing games, but Franklin learned valuable lessons that allowed him to become a head coach at Vanderbilt at age 38.
ALL WORK AND NO PLAY
Those hard-won lessons included how hard to work a team, especially one late in the season.
“These are things I always kept track of,” Franklin said on Wednesday. “It doesn’t make sense. You should be able to be out on the field a shorter amount of time as the season goes on.”
It was his SOP at Vanderbilt, where in three seasons Vandy’s record was 10-2 in November games – including the Commodores’ last nine, a winning percentage of .833. That included 4-0 marks in both 2012 and 2013, with wins both small (margins of 1, 2 and 4 points) and large (a 27.8-point victory margin in the other seven wins).
Even though Franklin’s first-year record for November at Vanderbilt was 2-2, the losses were impressive in their own right. In the two seasons prior to his arrival, the Commodores were 4-20 – including losses in 18 in the last 20 games. In 2011, Franklin’s two November defeats were a narrow 26-21 loss at Florida and a 27-21 overtime loss at in-state rival Tennessee. (Until last Saturday, it was the only OT game of Franklin’s head coaching career.)
Overall, among his November wins were a 27-26 victory at Ole Miss, a 34-17 win at Florida and a pair of victories at Tennessee.
PATERNO’S NO(LOSS)VEMBER
At Penn State, for a long time Joe Paterno owned November. After going 2-2 in 1966, he won a remarkable 26 November games in a row. Over Paterno’s first 33 years, his teams in November were 93-25-2, a .783 winning percentage, before winding down with a 23-16 mark from 1999-2010.
At Vandy, Franklin’s teams made huge transformations come the final month of the regular season. All three seasons, they entered November with 4-4 records. In Franklin’s last two seasons at Vanderbilt, they reeled off five consecutive victories and finished 9-4, while in 2011 they split the remaining four regular-season games.
So, I asked Franklin on Wednesday night, why do his teams turn up the heat when it gets cold? (OK, in Nashville, it just gets seasonably cool. For November, the average high there is 59 degrees and the average low is 40. In State College, it’s 50 and 34.)
“I think a lot of it is having an organized, well-thought-out plan ahead of time,” he replied. “And then when you do have a little bit of adversity, it’s not panicking and just sticking to the plan.Our plan is about loving these kids and working on fundamentals and technique and having sound schemes. And then just staying positive and working through it. I think when you do that you have a chance to get better every single day and every week. We’ve been able to do that.”
Over the past few weeks, Franklin has said repeatedly that he’s being careful about not overworking his undermanned squad. That’s especially true for the freshmen, for whom November was, at best, a time for high school playoffs.
As it is, Penn State (4-3) has five games remaining in 2014 — from Saturday against Maryland in Beaver Stadium through Indiana, Temple and Illinois, to Michigan State on Nov. 29. That’s five games in 29 days. In the 34 days leading up to the Terps, Penn State played two games.
Go figure. Now wait, that’s Franklin’s job.
“The other thing is modifying practice – taking advantage of (director of training services) Tim Bream’s experience, taking advantage of (director of performance enhancement) Dwight Galt’s experience and start to modifying practice and cutting back,” Franklin said. “I’ve been at places where the coaches are hard-headed and they’re old school and they’re not going to change – they’re going to practice.”
Franklin slapped one hand in the other three times for emphasis. Point well-made.
LOSING TO THE GATORS BITES
“So,” I asked him, “did you win that game against Florida.”
Franklin got the faintest of grins and did a little nod of his head. He knew the answer, obviously, and not just results of the 2002 Orange Bowl, either. He knew about the month of November and saving his team – whether it be Vandy or Penn State — for the stretch run.
“Uh…no,” he said. Pause. “We played Florida and it did not go real well.”
Maryland lost, 56-23.
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