Tony Franklin, the veteran college offensive coordinator with experience in the SEC and Pac-12, has landed a new play calling opportunity.
South Gwinnett HS (GA) has announced Franklin as their new offensive coordinator.
Franklin spent the last few seasons as the offensive coordinator of the Army Sprint program, and before that had most recently served as the offensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee State from 2016-20.
With over three decades of experience at the college level, Franklin has logged stops as a play caller at Kentucky, Auburn, Cal, Troy, Middle Tennessee (twice), and Louisiana Tech.
Franklin's journey has been one littered with interesting nuggets.
At Kentucky, Franklin moved from running backs to the offensive coordinator role the following the departure of Mike Leach for the Texas Tech head coaching job. In a move that is impossible to imagine happening in today's landscape of college football, he left the SEC play calling role after just two seasons for an opportunity to be a head coach at GM of the Lexington Horsemen of the National Indoor Football League.
He made a return to college football after just one season, taking the reigns of the Troy offense, where he inherited the worst offense in the league and made an immediate impact, leading the Sun Belt in passing and ranking second in total offense helping the program to conference title and the school's first bowl win.
That helped him land the offensive coordinator job at Auburn, where Tommy Tuberville brought him in around mid-December as they were preparing for the 2007 Chick-fil-A Bowl. Franklin installed his offense in just over a week, and then went out and took on a top 10 Clemson defense where they eclipsed the 400-yard mark, and ran a ridiculous 93 plays in a 23-20 win. Unfortunately, the 2008 season didn't hold the same success, as Franklin was let go after the Tigers ranked among the bottom nationally in total offense through six games and a 4-2 record.
After a one-year stint at Middle Tennessee, Franklin would revive his career at Louisiana Tech under Sonny Dykes, whom he worked with at Kentucky. After three seasons in Ruston, Franklin followed Dykes west to Cal, where they engineered a slow build from 1-11, to 5-7 before a breakout 8-5 season that saw Jared Goff set conference records for passing yards and touchdown passes in a season, which then set the stage for him to be the top overall pick of the 2016 NFL Draft, where he was selected by the LA Rams.
To high school coaches, Franklin is well known for traveling the country and helping to sell and install the Tony Franklin offensive system that was very popular for a time.
Now he'll get a chance to step into those same shoes as a high school play caller, as South Gwinnet plays in a tough Region 4 alongside tradition rich programs like Grayson (who went 11-3) and Newton (who went 8-3) as they look to rebuild following a disappointing 5-5 season overall, where they finished 1-4 in regional play.
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