Penn State Football: Signing Day and Snowstorm Make for Unique Wednesday

Most days of the week — if not all of them — James Franklin and his staff are rarely out of the Lasch Building and headed home at the same time as the rest of the world. There’s evening practice, there’s film, there’s decompressing from the day’s work and getting a head start on whatever tomorrow might bring.

On Wednesday there are two other things to contend with: National Signing Day, and a snowstorm that might very well drop well more than a foot of snow on State College.

During a normal year Penn State would be, at worst, going through bowl prep and practices during National Signing Day, but with one more game to go this season, the Nittany Lions are in the midst of another relatively normal game week. That means staff meetings and practices, phone calls to recruits and all the PR that comes with one of the biggest recruiting days of the year.

If Penn State follows its normal Wednesday schedule, the Nittany Lions will be wrapping up practice around 6:30 before Franklin does a brief video call with the media. 

All the while, it will be snowing, and snowing a lot. Depending on who you get your weather information from, State College could be experiencing up to 1-to-2 inches of snow in a single hour around the time Franklin leaves the practice field.

“It’s just another thing in 2020 that we’re going to have to handle, that we’re going to have to have a plan for’ Franklin said on Tuesday. ‘We’ve already started talking about it, not only as a staff but also also with the administration, but it should be interesting.’

The practicing itself isn’t all that difficult as the Nittany Lions have indoor and outdoor facilities for a reason. There is however that whole matter of getting home at the end of the day. Franklin lives a good 15-20 minutes from the Lasch Building with no shortage of hills between him and his house just outside the west side of State College. His other staff members are sprinkled around everywhere on both ends of town.

Which brings up the very unique possibility that getting home won’t quite be an option on Wednesday. With snow pouring out of the sky, it’s entirely possible that getting out of the Lasch Building parking lot isn’t all that feasible either. Sleepover?

“Fortunately here, we all live fairly close. Most of our guys live on campus,” Franklin said. “So, you know, we’ll do like we do everything else, we’ll figure it out. We’ll adjust and be ready to get the work done that needs to be done, but it’ll be interesting.’

Forunately for Franklin and his staff the snow shouldn’t be falling much longer than into Thursday morning and won’t be an on-field factor against Illinois this Saturday. Nevertheless, the sky opening up and dumping another obstacle on the football program is just another twist to an already strange year.

If nothing else, at least snow is fun.

“You know. it may start out as (Wednesday) football practice and it may end as a snowball fight. As long as I don’t get hit in the face, I’m good.” Franklin said.