A few months ago, after his Penn State team lost to Ohio State for the eight-straight time and 10th in his 11 seasons at the helm, coach James Franklin was captured on multiple video cameras vehemently arguing with a Penn State fan after the near-annual loss to the Buckeyes.
Saturday, at Penn State's spring game and on the heels of one of the Nittany Lions' most successful seasons this century, Franklin again was captured on video in the end zone of Beaver Stadium, per footage shared on X -- the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Penn State head coach James Franklin gets into an argument with a fan at the Penn State Blue White game @espn @BleacherReport pic.twitter.com/aCq4pzotKr
— . (@t1nkerzz) April 26, 2025
Franklin can be heard on the video demanding fans to tell him, "You wanna come talk to me, I'm happy to talk to you. Who said it? Who said it?"
Franklin brings over a member of the Penn State support staff in an attempt to identify who apparently had called Franklin "a fraud."
He's merely coming off the most successful season in the College Football Playoff era of the sport, having led Penn State to the CFP Semifinals where they suffered a come-from-ahead loss to eventual national runner-up Notre Dame.
Franklin did not appear to be asked about the incident in his post spring game press conference, but he had interesting commentary on the current state of collegiate athletics and particularly college football as the House Settlement winds its way toward formal approval -- potentially in the next 10 days.
Like myriad other programs throughout college football, Franklin had for months addressed the potential of a 105-man roster limitation -- an initial caveat of the agreed-upon House Settlement terms that Judge Claudia Wilken has pushed back against -- in football and all collegiate sports that would see rosters reduced by the measure.
"There’s light at the end of the tunnel from what I understand," Franklin said. "I’ve expressed to the team at the end of the fall, when the (NCAA Transfer) Portal was about to open, about the 105 and gave everybody an opportunity to go into the transfer portal and do what they need to do.
"It is my responsibility to educate our players what the process is and then how we’re going to handle it. At Penn State, you’re allowed to carry a full roster right up to your first game, so that is our plan to keep everybody on the team as long as we possibly can. I know what the game of football and college athletics in general [can do] in terms of helping build well-rounded individuals, so I’m fighting for what I believe is the best for our program. That’s why I wasn’t going to cut to the 105 earlier than I had to."
Penn State, coming off a 13-3 campaign that marked the longest in program history, opens its 2025 season Aug. 30 against Nevada.