PITTSBURGH– As focused as James Franklin is on the present and more specifically Penn State’s season opener against Temple, there are some topics that he simply cannot avoid.
One of them is the future of Penn State quarterback Christian Hackenberg. Everyone wants to know when he will go pro.
While Franklin won’t entertain this question for a host of reasons, it is probably safe to assume that it will happen sooner rather than later.
What is less certain, and an equally hot topic for some; the future of Penn State’s soon-to-begin series with Pitt.
Understanding this, Franklin took the bait on the week’s final Coaches Caravan stop in Pittsburgh to talk about the series. In his eyes it is something that has its benefits and its negatives. If nothing else though, he sees the extension of the series as a conversation worth having. It’s a step up from how Penn State has traditionally approached this once regular series.
“I think people are excited about it, especially in this region — ’16, ’17, ’18, ’19, — that’s a game that was set in stone before I obviously arrived,” Franklin said Thursday night. “There’s a lot of history and tradition with it, generally I’m in support of keeping the dollars in state and for supporting high school football in state, programs in state and all those types of things. In a lot of ways, there are some really good arguments you can make why [this series] makes sense.”
In many ways Penn State and Pitt is a Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight with Penn State loosely operating from the boxing perspective as Mayweather. The Nittany Lions have everything to lose by playing and potentially losing to Pitt. Pitt, on the other hand, has far more to gain by winning and less to lose if he comes up short.
For Penn State the positives are a tangible assertion of dominance over another opponent in the regional recruiting field. Nothing proves that point better than beating your rivals.
Conversely, for Penn State, a loss to Pitt is much like a loss to Rutgers and in some ways Maryland. The Nittany Lions, like Mayweather can avoid the “what if” factor all together by avoiding the series. You can’t lose games you don’t play. You can’t accumulate bad losses against teams you never face. The hype is its own victory. Get into the series, and get out.
Extending a series everyone wants to see is an easy move, but James Franklin isn’t a man who makes moves that aren’t calculated and in his best interest.
Which means not everything is as easy as it may seem.
Then again, who knows what the world will be like in 2020. Few people have vision that good.
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