There's nothing I love to chronicle among college football coaches and programs than the "If not now, when?" game. It's a moment when the supporters of a team have become full on good and developed an overwhelming appetite for great. Penn State and James Franklin played in like six of them, as recently as 15 days ago. They lost them all, including the one 15 days ago.
On Sept. 27, third-ranked Penn State had No. 6 Oregon in a 4th-and-1 with a 7-point lead in overtime. On Jan. 9, Penn State led Notre Dame 24-17 and had the Fighting Irish in a 2nd-and-14 at their own 15-yard line with 7:12 to play in a College Football Playoff semifinal. They lost both games. That's on top of his well-documented struggles with Ohio State and Peak Michigan. Penn State had its answer. It wasn't now, so it was never.
So, it's not surprising that Penn State moved on from James Franklin on Sunday. The bottom fell out, the plane was in a tailspin, the program was in a death spiral. The program termed it a firing, but the vast majority of James Franklin's 149 games were good ones, and his second-all-time buyout nearing $50 million was earned (more on that later). The program put everything it had into winning that Oregon game, and when they lost there was simply nothing left. It was a good run. But not a great one.
And that was the entire, maddening, heartbreaking problem.
What was the high point? Well, according to ESPN's dumb little Win Probability calculator, Penn State had an 89.6 percent chance to beat Notre Dame after tackling Jadarian Price for a 4-yard loss with just over seven minutes to play in the CFP semifinal in January. That is, officially, the closest this program has come to a national title in 39 years.
There's more to college football than the chase for a national championship, though. The 2016 win over No. 2 Ohio State was Peak College Football, and the ensuing Big Ten title was just the program's fifth conference crown (Penn State was independent for most of its history.) So much of life boils down to timing, and Franklin's run was 10 years too early. The 2016 Nittany Lions won the Big Ten but missed the 4-team College Football Playoff. In a world with a 12-team bracket, he makes the field in 2016, '17, '19, '22 and '23 in addition to last season. Those 2016-17 teams could've been 2024 Ohio State and gone on a run across December and January, but they were ahead of their time.
What was the low point? It wasn't Saturday, it was Dillon Thieneman's interception of Drew Allar to end the Oregon game. A death both sudden and a decade in the making. On a 1st-and-10 pass, the Franklin era was dressed in a suit, placed in a coffin and buried under ground the moment Thieneman caught that pass.
What did Franklin get right? At a program without the access to talent as an Ohio State or an SEC power, Franklin identified and recruited an impressive array of athletes. Saquon Barkley and Micah Parsons might be the two biggest freaks to play college football in this era. Tyler Warren, Jahan Dotson, and Abdul Carter aren't bad, either. An All-James Franklin team would give the Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama and Georgia All-Stars of this era a run for their money (before ultimately losing by a tantalizingly close margin).
What did Franklin get wrong? Notice how we didn't mention a quarterback there? Only one Franklin QB made an All-Big Ten team -- Trace McSorley. McSorley was 6-foot-even on his tip-toes, but Franklin fell in love with, for lack of a better term, big white stiffs at quarterback: Christian Hackenberg, Sean Clifford, Drew Allar. None of those guys ever made so much as an All-Big Ten Third Team. Whether Franklin and his staff chose the wrong guys or they failed to develop them is a chicken-egg question, but Franklin never took the final step because he never found his JJ McCarthy or his Stetson Bennett.
What did Penn State get right? No one can accuse the Nittany Lions of being impatient. They followed the 2024 Ohio State Blueprint of retaining and investing the top guys to make a run this season, it just didn't materialize.
What did Penn State get wrong? In hindsight, Penn State may have whistled past the graveyard in ignoring Jim Knowles's messy exit from Ohio State in their rush to pay him $3 million a year. But that wasn't close to the worst contract mistake of the Franklin era. That was, unquestionably, the 10-year, $75 million extension Penn State signed Franklin to at the end of the 2021 season. More specifically, that extension was announced Nov. 23, 2021, four days before the Lions lost to Michigan State to conclude a 7-5 regular season. It was as if AD Sandy Barbour saw the equally-mindless extension Mel Tucker had signed at Michigan State and wanted in on the fun.
"We have made, and will need to continue to make, significant investment in our football program because we believe we have a very bright future under James," Barbour said then.
Who was hiring Franklin away at that time? And would Penn State be in a worse position today if someone did? That deal didn't ultimately stop Penn State from moving on from Franklin today, but it won't help the program acquire a coach and team moving forward.
Where does Franklin go from here? Well, he can afford to sit on the beach for as long as he likes, that's for sure. However, if he wants to get this sour taste out of his mouth, Franklin could undoubtedly get the Virginia Tech job tomorrow and win lots of games without a beat-Ohio-State-and-win-a-national-title-or-else hammer swaying above his head for 365 days a year.
Where does Penn State go from here? This is the fascinating question, because we don't know what the Penn State job really is. The Bill O'Brien era was so short and so oddly timed thanks to the Jerry Sandusky sanctions that it basically never even happened. And before that, Joe Paterno held the job through thick and thin dating all the way back to 1826. So, did Franklin operate Penn State to 80 percent of its ultimate capacity? Or 120 percent? Both answers seem equally plausible to me at this juncture. It's probably unfair to compare Penn State to Ohio State, but what about Michigan? They've won two national championships all-time and four Big Ten titles across more than 30 years of membership.
Penn State is easily the best job on the market right now, but how good of a job would you leave to take over in Happy Valley?
In the end, the first question of the post-Franklin era is the same one we asked throughout his tenure: Yeah, this place is good, but what does it take to get to great?