Moving on from Franklin - A
It had to be done. Franklin clearly was distracted the entire season and the team modeled his lack of effort. Per insiders Franklin attempted to get a raise over the summer and unsuccessfully went over Krafty's head after he was denied and told to win the big games first. I think he resented this and it impacted his coaching performance during the season. Also of importance is that Franklin was mismanaging NIL by rewarding tenure rather than performance. There was reportedly descension in the locker room over NIL compensation. Franklin deserves more credit than he has received for his entire tenure, earning early success that was shocking to the cfb world and then maintained that consistency, but he simply had to go at the end. It was too toxic.
Choosing an Interim coach - A
Terry was widely respected in the lockeroom. It was important to quickly place him in the role of interim. Even in losses, the team played with a lot more juice. Terry recognized the lack of passing game and the difficulty the d had with Knowles very difficult scheme and made improvements. The pin was unfortunate and perhaps others influenced him to do that.
Coaching search process - F
Spent too much time going for the homerun in Elko, who was extremely low probability as a likely playoff coach. Krafty loved that Elko is from the northeast, but then inexplicably was enamored with Sitake, a great coach, but from a different region with zero ties to the northeast. Krafty did not anticipate the importance Sitake has in the Mormon community and was ultimately defeated by the cookie guy. Krafty also intentionally leaked the hire thinking a handshake was enough and never got a signature. In the end, it was for the best as Campbell is a better fit here. The other insane report is that Krafty did not have the right contact info for Campbell and missed an opportunity to hire him earlier and save at least a portion of the recruiting class.
Final Hire - A
Not to rehash all of the commentary already on the board, but Campbell is the right coach for this job. Kraft deserves credit for galvanizing the donors to make that NIL commitment to Campbell as well. I think Campbell has the ability to reach a higher ceiling than Franklin, but it will take time. We all see the amount of rot in the program. 2026 is a total rebuild year from the ground up.
Miscellaneous
The leaked audio of his locker room speech did contain a lot of truths and shows Krafty, while more meathead than brains, does understand the college football world and wants PSU to be successful.
It had to be done. Franklin clearly was distracted the entire season and the team modeled his lack of effort. Per insiders Franklin attempted to get a raise over the summer and unsuccessfully went over Krafty's head after he was denied and told to win the big games first. I think he resented this and it impacted his coaching performance during the season. Also of importance is that Franklin was mismanaging NIL by rewarding tenure rather than performance. There was reportedly descension in the locker room over NIL compensation. Franklin deserves more credit than he has received for his entire tenure, earning early success that was shocking to the cfb world and then maintained that consistency, but he simply had to go at the end. It was too toxic.
Choosing an Interim coach - A
Terry was widely respected in the lockeroom. It was important to quickly place him in the role of interim. Even in losses, the team played with a lot more juice. Terry recognized the lack of passing game and the difficulty the d had with Knowles very difficult scheme and made improvements. The pin was unfortunate and perhaps others influenced him to do that.
Coaching search process - F
Spent too much time going for the homerun in Elko, who was extremely low probability as a likely playoff coach. Krafty loved that Elko is from the northeast, but then inexplicably was enamored with Sitake, a great coach, but from a different region with zero ties to the northeast. Krafty did not anticipate the importance Sitake has in the Mormon community and was ultimately defeated by the cookie guy. Krafty also intentionally leaked the hire thinking a handshake was enough and never got a signature. In the end, it was for the best as Campbell is a better fit here. The other insane report is that Krafty did not have the right contact info for Campbell and missed an opportunity to hire him earlier and save at least a portion of the recruiting class.
Final Hire - A
Not to rehash all of the commentary already on the board, but Campbell is the right coach for this job. Kraft deserves credit for galvanizing the donors to make that NIL commitment to Campbell as well. I think Campbell has the ability to reach a higher ceiling than Franklin, but it will take time. We all see the amount of rot in the program. 2026 is a total rebuild year from the ground up.
Miscellaneous
The leaked audio of his locker room speech did contain a lot of truths and shows Krafty, while more meathead than brains, does understand the college football world and wants PSU to be successful.