Franklin not letting up on PSU’s COVID protocols
About a week before the season opener, Penn State football coach James Franklin won’t allow the Nittany Lions to become less vigilant about following coronavirus protocols.
Although Penn State has been relatively unaffected, Franklin has seen 30 Football Bowl Subdivision games altered by COVID-19. He’s seen Alabama’s Nick Saban, the highestprofile coach in college football, test positive this week.
That explains why Franklin continues to be, as he called himself in August, a “mother hen” around Penn State’s football facilities.
“I drive everybody crazy,” he said this week. “I’m the nag all day long in the office. I’m the nag all day long at practice. And then I get mad at the other personnel on the field because I need some help in making sure that we’re all doing it.”
All Big Ten football teams, including Penn State, are undergoing daily antigen testing, one of the chief reasons why the conference presidents reversed an original postponement and decided to proceed with an abbreviated season. That can limit the spread of the coronavirus, but it can’t eradicate it.
“We’ve been told from friends in the NFL that as soon as everyday testing started, people felt that covered everything,” Franklin said. “It’s just another layer of protection.”
In order to stay safe, Penn State players, coaches, trainers and staffers are policing each other. Franklin is running the program, but he’s not the only one reminding folks to wear masks, maintain social distancing and wash hands.
“People are holding each other accountable within the building, making sure that we’re being sanitary, keeping our distance and what not,” safety Jonathan Sutherland said. “Guys are holding each other accountable outside the facility by not going out and not doing anything that would jeopardize our team or what not.
“That’s been working very well for all of us.”
Backup offensive lineman Des Holmes (Cardinal O’Hara All-Delco) said it comes to being unselfish and considering the greater good. If a Big Ten football player tests positive, he can’t play for at least 21 days.
“It’s about sacrifice,” Holmes said. “This is a year where you can’t mess around with this COVID stuff. Everybody needs to be as safe as possible, quarantine the way they’re supposed to and make responsible decisions for the team.
“At the end of the day, it’s about the team. It’s not about the individuals, so you have to make sacrifices for everybody.”
Franklin has become so accustomed to wearing a mask, he sometimes forgets he’s wearing one even when alone in his office. That is, until his glasses fog, a problem for many.
“If any of you guys (in the media) can come up with a way to help with that, that’s my issue,” he said. “In practice the other day I kind of lost my stuff and was screaming. I couldn’t even see who I was screaming at because my glasses were all fogged up and I looked like an idiot.”
Several Penn State teams had to suspend workouts in September because of a spike in cases, but football was not among them. The athletic department reported Wednesday in its weekly update that there were three positive results and five pending among 1,302 tests of student-athletes from Oct. 3-9.
Franklin is trying to convince everybody within the program not to get complacent about the protocols.
“As soon as we made this decision to play college football, we knew there was going to be definite challenges that came with it,” he said. “And just as much as challenges, there was going to have to be significant sacrifices made and there was going to have to be significant discipline shown by everyone.
“We’re just trying to do the best we possibly can to make this thing work. Not only how we play on the field and how we coach, but the discipline of how we conduct ourselves away from the Lasch Football Building and Beaver Stadium is going to impact what we do.”