Penn State wants to join FBS elite
Franklin intends to make leap from great
More so than any coach in college football, there is no gray area in how Penn State’s James Franklin is perceived on a national level. A good case in point is his postgame screed after the Nittany Lions’ one-point loss to Ohio State, which has been viewed as either a rallying cry in the wake of a brutal setback or an utter load of nonsense.
But nothing he said was wrong, starting with his culpability in the game’s deciding moment: the zone-read play call on 4th-and-5 with a minute left, which resulted in the ball being taken out of senior quarterback Trace McSorley’s hands and a 2-yard loss that sealed the Buckeyes’ win.
“Obviously, we should have called something different there,” Franklin said. “That’s on me, nobody else. That’s on me.”
Every failed decision looks bad in hindsight. Maybe Penn State should have gone for it on fourth down instead of punting from Ohio State’s 39-yard line on the game’s opening possession. Maybe the Nittany Lions should have done the same when up by six points with under five minutes left in the fourth quarter, though that’s harder to nitpick: Penn State’s punt landed at the Ohio State 4, forcing the Buckeyes to travel 96 yards of real estate to notch the eventual winning score.
“We didn’t finish the game the way we should have finished the game, there’s no doubt about it,” Franklin said. “We played a great first half but weren’t able to finish late in the game. Obviously, you secondguess some things after a loss like that.”
The main thrust of Franklin’s comments after the heartbreaking loss touched on the current gap between his program and Ohio State — he called Penn State a “great program” and Ohio State an “elite” one — and went lost in translation, muddled by his statement that classroom attendance, among other things, will play a key factor in making up the Buckeyes’ one-point edge.
“We lost by one point this year, we lose by one point last year,” he said. “You make that up by the little things. By going to class consistently so the coaches don’t have to baby-sit you and we can spend our time developing you as men and as people and as players and not be babysitting everything.”
There’s defensiveness there, not to mention in Franklin’s regrettable backand-forth with a fan as he walked off the field and up the tunnel toward the locker room. That defensiveness is born in the moment, a negative reaction to an understandable sense of failure, and Franklin needs to be better than that.
He’s still not wrong: There’s not too much separating Penn State from Ohio State, on the scoreboard and in the standings, and the Nittany Lions don’t seem far from breaking into the elite group atop the Football Bowl Subdivision.
“The reality is that we’ve gone from an average football team to a good football team to a great football team and we’ve worked really hard to do those things,” he said. “Right now we’re comfortable being great. I’m going to make sure that every- body in my program, including myself, is very uncomfortable.”
The next step is the most difficult one. College football is populated with its fair share of programs such as Penn State, teams that fight for conference championships and high-profile bowls while occupying a space one rung below an Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia or Oklahoma. Of all those programs in this sort of purgatory — a club that includes Washington, Auburn, Wisconsin and others — Penn State might be the closest to a breakthrough, based on its recent series with the Buckeyes and successive New Year’s Six appearances.
So when Franklin says Penn State has “been knocking at the door long enough,” he’s not wrong. Nor is he wrong in saying that “it’s my job as a head coach” to get there, and that “I’m ultimately responsible for it.”
“I give you my word,” he said. “We are going to find a way to take the next step. We’re done being great.”
In terms of a timeline, Clemson provides the best analog for Penn State. While now fully ensconced as a national power, the Tigers weren’t an overnight success; the program’s arrival came five full seasons into Dabo Swinney’s tenure, in an Orange Bowl win against Ohio State. It’s a nice parallel.
Unlike Clemson, the Nittany Lions haven’t nailed down the sort of win that can alter a program’s perception; they have beaten Ohio State, back in 2016, but that win came after two losses in September. In that sense, Saturday night feels like a missed opportunity. A chance to put itself in prime position for the College Football Playoff was lost. But Franklin’s right: Penn State is close. Now he needs to navigate the Nittany Lions through the space separating a great program from an elite one.
“Every single thing matters, and I’m going to be all over all of it,” he said. “Because no one is happy with this. Our fans aren’t happy. I’m not happy with it. I could sit here and say it’s a moral victory and all that because we lost to a higherranked team by one point. No. It’s not good enough.”