The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Penn State
Franklin said he and others have worked on several different models, in case the players return in a month, six weeks, two months, etc.
“There are a lot of things to work through,” he said. “I wish I had a specific answer, but we’re literally just starting to really dig deep on that one.”
Penn State strength and conditioning director Dwight Galt and his staff have created individualized workouts for the football team because the players have different equipment and different facilities available to them.
Some players, for example, have weights at home and some don’t. Some have access to fields or running tracks and some don’t.
“It’s not like we could just send the (same) workout to the whole team,” Franklin said. “Some may have a kettle ball or something like that in their house. We had to find out what they do have and build a workout around that for them.
“Some people have more space in their home, in their basement or in their backyard so that they’re still able to do some things. We’ve also tried to look at backpack workouts, whether it’s taking a backpack or a duffel bag and loading them with sand or rocks. It’s basically a body-weight workout with whatever that backpack or bag is able to hold.”
Another challenge for Penn State is that the Nittany Lions have four new assistant coaches who were unable to become more acquainted with their position players during spring practice, which was canceled.
Kirk Ciarrocca, the new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, has worked with Franklin to develop a new playbook that includes schemes from Penn State and Minnesota, where Ciarrocca coached the last three seasons.
“We’ve been able to do a lot of this stuff remotely,” Franklin said, “but obviously face-to-face time is important. It’s one thing to be able to know the playbook and it’s one thing to have discussions, but you learn so much by going against your defense every single day in practice and vice versa.”
Penn State’s recruiting also has been affected by the measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The Lions received a significant commitment Thursday from Maryland four-star offensive lineman Landon Tengwall, but their Class of 2021 has just three members.
“I think this has been more challenging for the Northeast schools than it has been for most of the schools in the country,” Franklin said. “Some schools have gotten done with spring ball. Some schools have gotten through half of spring ball. Some have had junior days.
“We weren’t able to get recruits on campus like we normally do. Spring ball is a huge recruiting time for us for them (high school players) to come up, watch practice and interact with the coaches. …FaceTime is probably as big as anything with the recruits right now and finding ways to interact with them.”
Then there are the financial considerations. At Penn State, football funds many of the other 28 sports. If the 2020 season is shortened or canceled, it could affect those other sports and business on State College hotels, restaurants and stores.
“If this continues to roll into the fall, it’s going to have significant impacts,” Franklin said. “Everybody is aware of that. We’ve had a lot of discussions to prepare for that. In a perfect world, we can lock this thing down and hopefully get back to the way things have been in the past, by summertime or late summertime.
“If this goes into the fall, with the revenue that football brings in for Penn State and a lot of universities across the United States, that’s going to be a whole other conversation.”