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The curious case of James Franklin

18IsTheMan

18IsTheMan

Heisman
Oct 1, 2014
17,350
14,507
113
PSU fans are finding themselves in a familiar position, licking their wounds after another tough luck loss to a top team. It's a curious predicament for PSU. On the one hand, Franklin is a consistent winner. Aside from the first 2 seasons where he was rebuilding and the weird 20/21 seasons during and after covid, he's had them consistently top 10/top 15. He's a consistent 10+ game winner. He just can't win the big ones, going 4-21 against top 10 teams (1-15 in the Big 10). He consistently has them in the hunt for the Big 10 championship and will most likely have them in the expanded CFP each season. He recruits well. He just can't win the big games, and it's an established pattern at this point. Which makes for a tough call for PSU. Do you accept perpetually being almost but never quite good enough to win it all? Or do you dump your 10+ game winner and roll the dice on a new coach who might come in and proceed to have 8 win seasons or worse? Few teams are afforded the luxury of firing a guy who consistently has them in the top 10, but frustration is mounting as many believe he'll never be able to get them over the hump, and there is a large body of data to back that up.
 
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Gamecock23

Freshman
Jan 20, 2022
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18IsTheMan said:
PSU fans are finding themselves in a familiar position, licking their wounds after another tough luck loss to a top team. It's a curious predicament for PSU. On the one hand, Franklin is a consistent winner. Aside from the first 2 seasons where he was rebuilding and the weird 20/21 seasons during and after covid, he's had them consistently top 10/top 15. He's a consistent 10+ game winner. He just can't win the big ones, going 4-21 against top 10 teams (1-15 in the Big 10). He consistently has them in the hunt for the Big 10 championship and will most likely have them in the expanded CFP each season. He recruits well. He just can't win the big games, and it's an established pattern at this point. Which makes for a tough call for PSU. Do you accept perpetually being almost but never quite good enough to win it all? Or do you dump your 10+ game winner and roll the dice on a new coach who might come in and proceed to have 8 win seasons or worse? Few teams are afforded the luxury of firing a guy who consistently has them in the top 10, but frustration is mounting as many believe he'll never be able to get them over the hump, and there is a large body of data to back that up.
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Mark Richt like?
 
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18IsTheMan

18IsTheMan

Heisman
Oct 1, 2014
17,350
14,507
113
Gamecock23 said:
Mark Richt like?
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Pretty comparable, yeah. Though UGA finished unranked in 4 of his final 7 seasons, which doesn't quite to compare to where Franklin is, so I think UGA fans were starting to worry about program decline. There's no apparent decline for PSU. They just simply cannot beat top teams.
 
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Cobie

Cobie

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Jul 2, 2025
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18IsTheMan said:
PSU fans are finding themselves in a familiar position, licking their wounds after another tough luck loss to a top team. It's a curious predicament for PSU. On the one hand, Franklin is a consistent winner. Aside from the first 2 seasons where he was rebuilding and the weird 20/21 seasons during and after covid, he's had them consistently top 10/top 15. He's a consistent 10+ game winner. He just can't win the big ones, going 4-21 against top 10 teams (1-15 in the Big 10). He consistently has them in the hunt for the Big 10 championship and will most likely have them in the expanded CFP each season. He recruits well. He just can't win the big games, and it's an established pattern at this point. Which makes for a tough call for PSU. Do you accept perpetually being almost but never quite good enough to win it all? Or do you dump your 10+ game winner and roll the dice on a new coach who might come in and proceed to have 8 win seasons or worse? Few teams are afforded the luxury of firing a guy who consistently has them in the top 10, but frustration is mounting as many believe he'll never be able to get them over the hump, and there is a large body of data to back that up.
Click to expand...

PSU recruiting rank has hovered around #14-15 since Franklin arrived.

There's a massive divide in talent between the Top 10 and the rest.

He's not going to consistently beat the best teams (or come even close) with those numbers.

You always place far too much emphasis on coaching -- as it's your best/only angle to complain and get people worked up. 👇

---------------------------------------

"Risk-adjusted returns (ala Sharpe Ratio) consistently has shown that teams with top-10 recruiting classes (e.g. BAMA, UGA, etc.) achieve high win percentages (0.870+) with low variability (yielding high ratios -- e.g., 2.5-3.0).

"At the elite schools, "finding the right coach" is more a function of "don't F this up."

"We don't have that luxury -- especially in this NIL environment."
 
18IsTheMan

18IsTheMan

Heisman
Oct 1, 2014
17,350
14,507
113
While Richt's teams seemed to be trending slightly down, Franklin's PSU teams have each seemed stronger than the previous one for the last few years. Even though they seem to be getting better overall, they just can't win one game or two every season.
 
18IsTheMan

18IsTheMan

Heisman
Oct 1, 2014
17,350
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And, what I love about college football is the overreaction.

PSU lost to UCLA and the fans are ready to burn it down. Granted, this season is a disaster for PSU...yet to notch a win over a P4 team...but the UCLA loss is really the first truly ugly loss of Franklin's time at PSU. One of the very few times he's lost to a team they're supposed to beat. He's been remarkably successful in those games...almost upset-proof. But he also almost never wins games they aren't supposed to win.

I would say PSU should be cautious about moving on from a guy who is typically going to get you double digit wins. They could fall into a Nebraska or Florida cycle.
 
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SouthernBelly

Senior
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18IsTheMan said:
And, what I love about college football is the overreaction.

PSU lost to UCLA and the fans are ready to burn it down. Granted, this season is a disaster for PSU...yet to notch a win over a P4 team...but the UCLA loss is really the first truly ugly loss of Franklin's time at PSU. One of the very few times he's lost to a team they're supposed to beat. He's been remarkably successful in those games...almost upset-proof. But he also almost never wins games they aren't supposed to win.

I would say PSU should be cautious about moving on from a guy who is typically going to get you double digit wins. They could fall into a Nebraska or Florida cycle.
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Firing Franklin would be incredibly stupid. I hope they do it.
 
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18IsTheMan

18IsTheMan

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SouthernBelly said:
Firing Franklin would be incredibly stupid. I hope they do it.
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Well, his buyout is $56 million, so firing is not possible. Many are speculating that they could mutually agree to part ways, but why would he give away $56 million?

It's very bad timing for him to have, really, the first ugly loss during his time at PSU, coming on the heels of another failure against a top 10 team. The optics are probably 50x worse than they'd normally be.

Unless PSU really spirals, I can't see a firing happening. They need to just be happy with double digit wins most seasons.
 
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SouthernBelly

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18IsTheMan said:
Well, his buyout is $56 million, so firing is not possible. Many are speculating that they could mutually agree to part ways, but why would he give away $56 million?

It's very bad timing for him to have, really, the first ugly loss during his time at PSU, coming on the heels of another failure against a top 10 team. The optics are probably 50x worse than they'd normally be.

Unless PSU really spirals, I can't see a firing happening. They need to just be happy with double digit wins most seasons.
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Absolutely agree. Just like seeing college football chaos
 
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Piscis

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Franklin really is the B1G version of Mark Richt. He wins a good number of games (I think Richt averaged around 10 wins a season for 15 years) but can't beat the good teams he plays to get over the hump.

PSU won't fire Franklin over the UCLA loss but if he loses a couple more, the seat could get warm.
 
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I4CtheFuture

I4CtheFuture

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Franklin wasn't hired cause he's a good coach. He was hired to keep the PSU image squeaky clean - and he's done that.

But the reality is he's not a good football coach at all.
 
U

uscfan1981

Joined May 1, 2006
Apr 30, 2006
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I4CtheFuture said:
Franklin wasn't hired cause he's a good coach. He was hired to keep the PSU image squeaky clean - and he's done that.

But the reality is he's not a good football coach at all.
Click to expand...
He went 24-15, had two 9 win seasons, 3 bowls, won 2 and finished in the top 25 twice in 3 years at VANDY.
In their history, Vandy has 3 bowl wins, and four 9 win seasons, the others were 1915 and 1904.
 
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I4CtheFuture

I4CtheFuture

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uscfan1981 said:
He went 24-15, had two 9 win seasons, 3 bowls, won 2 and finished in the top 25 twice in 3 years at VANDY.
In their history, Vandy has 3 bowl wins, and four 9 win seasons, the others were 1915 and 1904.
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Understand all that but he's like 2 and 497 in games that actually matter. That's not good. You can count on, bank on a few things each CFB season. 1) Notre Dame will be over-rated. 2) Ohio St plays no one. 3) PSU will lose a big game. Every time Franklin steps on the field in a big game with PSU - they lose. It's like the sun coming up, you can count on it.

If he was just 50% in those big games - I wouldn't have a point.
 
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