As James Franklin leaves his office, he gives me a once over.
“I told them I bet you have a good stride.”
And thankfully he’s right — being tall has its perks — not to mention the confidence boost that comes with being on the receiving end of the only athletic compliment a coach will ever give me.
There are two things worth noting as we leave the Lasch Building for a walk that will encompass just over 5.5 miles: First of all, it’s the hottest day of the year so far. Second, Franklin walks fast and the man doesn’t slow down for anyone. It’s hard to know what feels like more of a test: the speed, the heat or the distance.
There is a certain lore within the program when it comes to Franklin’s walks or “The Walk” as some people call it. If you get invited, you usually go, but if you can avoid a second walk you do. Those who aren’t taking “The Walk” can see it in the flesh if you’re in the right place at the right time. The sight is something to behold, Franklin powering along with one or two poor souls trailing not far behind, doing their best to carry on the conversation.
“You coming?” Franklin says to assistant recruiting coordinator Hunter Carson as we make our turn down the hill away from parking lot. She laughs and politely declines.
And off we go.
University Drive:
“Hello,” Franklin says, trying to get the attention of a woman walking toward us, headphones tightly on her head. He tries again as she gets closer “Hello?”
She walks by, unaware, or perhaps uninterested.
Franklin just laughs, remarking that his success rate with these sorts of encounters is hit or miss.
* * *
It has been an interesting seven, soon-to-be-eight, years for Franklin, a coach who finds himself coming off the strangest season of his career. One would be hard pressed to say his tenure at Penn State has been anything but a success, although one would be hard pressed to forget the near-misses that have popped up along the way.
Then again sports are full of those moments you would like to have back, and it’s not Franklin’s fault the playoff committee skipped over the Nittany Lions in 2016 in spite of their resume. If anything, Penn State has been an interesting exercise in the true challenge of being a relevant top 15 program. Everyone’s good is good, but how good is your bad?
Whatever your evaluation of Franklin’s tenure at Penn State so far might be, it’s undeniable he has long passed by the fleeting excitement of something new and shiny in a post-Paterno era. If Bill O’Brien was a transition, James Franklin is an era — a rarity for a program that had been dominated by one man. All told, only three coaches prior to Paterno have coached more games at Penn State than Franklin and only two have won more games.
And all of that brings up questions. More on that later.
* * *
Beaver Stadium:
There is construction going on at the stadium. It’s relatively minor — some access improvements at the gates — but it impacts the course of the walk a little bit.
“I’m so routine oriented,” Franklin says as we traverse the parking lots. “I’ll come and do this walk on our days off.”
We turn left and head down the hill past those unassuming trees that have long replaced a once not-so-unassuming statue.
“Usually I have to duck my head here,” he adds with a laugh as we go past the Pennsylvania State University sign, a hot spot for photos. It’s empty today, in fact it’s behind construction fences of its own.
Franklin’s phone rings as we head back toward town. He’s talking in code to avoid breaking one of the NCAA’s many recruiting compliance rules when reporters are around. It’s a hilarious system of making sure people don’t hear about things they shouldn’t in a world dominated by websites that hear these things anyway. As Franklin notes after hanging up the phone, he doesn’t really care if I hear, but rules are rules.
Judging by the events later that day, the call was about soon-to-commit prospect Tyler Johnson.
The Arboretum:
Franklin hasn’t had to say hello to anyone recently, with students out of town and State College residents rarely out by the stadium, it’s just the two of us. The conversation drifts a bit, mostly off-the-record or mostly small talk [Franklin shaves his head almost every day of the week; yes he sometimes thinks about the games and recruits that got away but he’s also better at it than he once was; he really likes the auditorium in the law building; etc., etc.]
But for a man who likes saying hello and hasn’t gotten to recently, the Arboretum is a playground of greetings. A family here, a few students there, people who realize who he is and others who really just don’t care. We weave our way in and around the plants and bushes, and back out the other side toward more obligatory summer construction.
Back Toward Campus:
It can be a mistake to pretend writing about a person and interviewing them gives you a real grasp of the things going on inside their head. Coaches — really anyone with a microphone in their face — are forced to craft a narrative that fits their needs and fits their comfort level in that moment. That’s not to say they lack authenticity, but in most cases it’s worth remembering things are rarely said without meaning, purpose or objective.
All the same it was hard to deny the degree to which Franklin appeared visibly unhappy in 2020. Starting 0-5 didn’t help, a pandemic didn’t improve things, and being separated from his family didn’t help the situation.
In turn, as the world tentatively reunites with itself, Franklin appears — as much as anyone can truly tell from a distance — happier. His girls, the younger of whom has sickle cell disease and is more susceptible to the virus, are down in Florida at the moment but both are vaccinated, finally. Back in town Franklin’s public appearances that occasionally bubble onto social media seem more genuine and happier, perhaps like everyone else he’s just glad the pandemic is in the fourth quarter.
And of course every coach is happy to be undefeated in the offseason, but there is pep in Franklin’s step again.
“You seem happier?”
Franklin thinks for a moment or two.
“We’re already out of balance,” Franklin says of work/life and coaching, reflecting on the fact his family was separated from him during the past season.
“Let’s be honest, anyone who says they have balance is lying. So you’re already out of balance. So anything on top of that, that throws you more in one direction. It totally throws you out of whack, because you found a way to balance it. And then when you talk about, you know what your loneliness is, there’s only so many people to talk to. That’s why [Vanderbilt baseball coach] Tim Corbin is great for me. I was down in Nashville a couple weeks ago for a wedding and had lunch with Tim and Maggie for probably two and a half hours because there’s only so many people you can talk to…” (Franklin’s extended comments include his positive relationships with assistants and Penn State administrators as well as missing small family moments – but have been edited for length.)
Franklin goes on for a bit, talking about the balancing act that comes with expressing his own struggles last year without his family while also understanding what the rest of the world is going through. Ultimately an understanding that there is only so much empathy for a man who makes millions and whose problems are real but at least minimized by his job security and the ability to assure his family relative health and safety.
But yes, he’s happier. And who could blame him.
Back on Campus:
About longevity: it’s hard to really quantify what counts as “a long time” in college football because the baseline has changed on so many occasions. The Paterno model of quite literally spending almost your entire life in the same place ended long before his career did, but there is still an appreciation for continuity. There is a certain irony that the thing coaches so often desire within their program — stability and a lack of change — is often the thing they so often neglect to give themselves in a nomadic profession.
But as Franklin slowly marches down a decade in State College, it is perhaps only natural to wonder how long that number will rise. Not because he has to leave, but simply because coaches so often do.
And this brings up a larger and more difficult question to answer, or even articulate: Franklin’s relationship with the town itself, and how long exactly that will keep him around?
That thought brings up another.
“I could list off four places and say that you might consider it home; does [State College] feel like home?”
This is an unintentionally loaded question — because Franklin can only answer it so many ways — but the way he answers is the interesting part. Franklin is charismatic. He and his wife Fumi have lived near, in or around cities big and small. It seems unlikely Franklin would leave Penn State for another school tucked in the middle of nowhere with only so much going on. There is a reason why people see him recruiting and winning at a school in a big city and using everything within his reach to his advantage. For all of State College’s perks, it can’t compete, in certain ways, with L.A. or Miami or any of the nation’s more flashy destinations.
Of course, that doesn’t mean State College is without its advantages. Franklin enjoys relative seclusion living just outside of town itself. But back to the question at hand.
“The fact that we’ve lived in so many places and moved so many times — I think that the normal definition of home for you and for most people is very different,” Franklin says as we cross the street. “Because you just had to adapt and adjust so many times in so many different regions of the country.
“I’ve been able to go to Idaho State, and really find things that I liked about my experience. I feel like I can kind of adapt anywhere. But to be able to come back to the state of Pennsylvania where I have so much history and connections — so there’s a lot of that. And I think there’s comfort. I do think there’s aspects that feel like home because pretty much throughout the entire state I can pick up the phone and call somebody that can give me perspective on something or is going to be supportive of our program.
“For some of our staff, it was hard leaving Nashville with the music and the food. For me and my wife, we are pretty much homebodies anyway and that’s never been a driving force for me. You know, it’s been about being somewhere that cares about football and where you can be honest and transparent with people that you hire and recruit. Literally you can sell it all here for our family. The fact that if I need to shoot home or my wife needs to shoot over here or I need to go by school for the girls and have lunch with them, you can do that. Wherever you’re at Maryland, you know, that could be anywhere between 45 minutes, an hour and 20 minutes based on traffic, so it allows you to be the dad or the father, the husband, that you want to be.
“So I guess what I’m saying is, yes I would describe it as it feels like home. But I would also say that for the reader, I just think that definition is different.”
As we turn on to College Avenue, it’s hard not to think of the strange relationship college football coaches have with the college towns in which they live. If anything, the relationship is more visceral because so much of what makes the town go is on the backs of a handful of people. You are loved, you are hated, and you are loved again.
But the hellos continue, and they are returned more often than not. No matter how you feel about the team’s performance last week, last month, last year or seasons ago, the head coach of the Penn State football team doesn’t go unnoticed in downtown State College — or without people who may have booed him one day, looking for a handshake the next.
And for better or worse, Franklin remembers the boos.
There is a slight juxtaposition here, of course. On the one hand, Franklin has a keen sense of the job with which he is tasked. In turn, the binary nature of sports is not lost on him. You win or you lose; you play well or you don’t. People are paying to watch whatever happens, but they really only want to see one thing. But the longer you try, perhaps the more you want people to appreciate the effort.
Given the Penn State football program’s close brush with institutional death, perhaps, maybe, you also want a bit more acceptance and a bit more of that warm embrace for what has happened over the past few years compared to what many assumed would happen. It’s hard to gauge how much Franklin truly wants or truly cares for the cultural affirmation from some 107,000, but it’s not unreasonable to understand why he might seek it out.
And for the part of the masses, if the end of Paterno’s tenure did anything good for the cultural psyche of the town, it may have been to release it from an obligatory loyalty to whomever might be roaming the sidelines. Perhaps more importantly as time passes along, so, too, the crowds that lived under the umbrella of Paterno loyalism that made a man bigger than a program. In turn, many of those who now call Beaver Stadium home have only known sports to be a transactional relationship, a place where loyalty is more to an idea — winning — than it is a person.
All told this is not to say Franklin is unappreciated, or that being appreciated is his main end, but the relationship is different than it once was for his most noteworthy predecessor.
“I’m not going to be one of these coaches that say ‘I don’t read the newspaper; I don’t see articles’ … people bring stuff up they think I need to be aware of. But I think what happens is for players, coaches, it’s not a job — if your coaching career has been you’re a mercenary and you just come in and win some games and then move on to the next job, then you probably don’t because you’re detached.
“But when you’re somewhere and it’s bigger than football, it’s about family, it’s about education, it’s about the things that I think we’ve done a pretty good job at… if you just come in here and it’s just about winning and you’re going to leave and go to the NFL, or whatever it may be then maybe those things don’t affect you as much. But if you do feel like you’re sensitive and connected to those types of things and trying to do it the right way, it does hit a little bit differently.”
When it’s all said and done this is the coaching and fandom relationship in a nutshell: a place where neither party is right or wrong. Franklin is probably underappreciated by some. He also probably overvalues the cheers and might misinterpret the boos for anything more than a Philadelphia-style reminder that you can, should and ought to be better than you are at this moment in time.
If nothing else, it is a reminder that your job will only love you back so much.
Nevertheless, we find ourselves turning left on Atherton Street.
Beaver Avenue:
“I’m not going to answer that question,” Franklin says with a laugh, because he knows that I know he wasn’t going to.
But the big question is the most interesting. At the end of the day James Franklin could have a very long and likely very successful career coaching his days away at Penn State. He might not hit 410 wins, but he could win a few more Big Ten titles, make the playoffs and, all things being equal, a few of those teams might give a national title run a real shot.
How long that might take is unknown, and given the current climate, one in which Ohio State poses an ever present threat and the likes of Clemson and Alabama are simply better teams, there are easier routes to the kind of dominance Franklin might aspire to.
In short, if James Franklin really wants to win a title — and become the first Black head coach at this level to do so — the easiest road to doing that might not be at Penn State. And if that’s the biggest thing on his mind, then perhaps he will only try to do it in State College for so long.
Of course he’s not going to talk about that, but of course we both already knew this.
“I guess what I would say to answer that question, is that the driving force for me? No, it’s not,” he says. “It’s literally, what can I do to put the players in the best position to be successful? I mean, that’s not just me just saying something that sounds good. I literally mean that. Also, what can I do to put Penn State and the community in the best position?
“And is this [racial representation and success] important? Yes, and for obviously much more than just me, but for the impact on players and for young coaches coming up in the profession. I always make the argument, whether or not you agreed with Obama and some of his political ideologies or philosophies or however you want to describe it, that was good for our country. Just like with Kamala [Harris] That’s good for young girls to see that.
“And to me, that’s kind of what I’m saying is, by doing well, young coaches and players that think they want to do it, they’ve seen somebody do it before. University presidents and ADs see it. Because if you look at it, literally in my 20 years, the numbers [of minority coaches] have not changed – it’s basically a similar number. The numbers spiked up a little bit and spiked back down and it really hasn’t moved too much, the number of coaches that look like me.
“I guess my point is, if that was the point and the driving force for everything, you would handle things differently.”
There is a pause in the conversation as we continue on Beaver Avenue and head slowly but surely back up the hill toward Lasch. Franklin’s pace hasn’t wavered since the walk began an hour or so ago.
In a way that’s fitting: a relentless march toward whatever is next. In a sense it is not far from Franklin’s own journey toward another high profile season. It’s painful and not always fun but the end result is rewarding.
“This is usually where people lag behind the most,” Franklin says as we hit the brunt of the hill and his speed increases. “I like to just get it over with.”
All told, it is perhaps a pointless task trying to quantify the relationship between a town and its coach, his hope for acceptance and the reality that being a coach means frequently being rejected by the people you’re aiming to please. These things are not easy to quantify because the data points are endless and for every little thing that might bother Franklin in the moment, there are the things that make State College feel like home as much as any place has felt like home for him.
And home doesn’t have to be perfect, because whose home is?
We rush up the hill and turn right, now not far from the Lasch Building at all, and the conversation turns toward less salient matters: hockey, ticket prices, the potential for an expanded playoff.
A few minutes later, we’re headed down the hallway back toward his office. One of us is drenched, the other hasn’t lost a step. We stop to close out our conversation and to find a bottle of water.
“See you in a few months,” I say as I leave.
“A few months?” Franklin says “It’ll be sooner than that.”
And then he powers off down the hall like nothing happened, toward whatever year eight might hold.
