Urban Meyer claims Penn State has locker room problems amid James Franklin firing

Penn State stumbled to a 3-3 start in 2025, fresh off an appearance in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff. It resulted in the ouster of long-time coach James Franklin.

Amidst the chaos, former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, now an analyst with FOX Sports, attempted to make sense of how it went south so quickly for Franklin. He settled on two main explanations.

“Instead of just piling on and saying the facts, this is it, here’s why, though,” Meyer said on The Triple Option podcast. “Because every coach has dealt with a team that underperforms, and there’s two reasons. Penn State was exposed. I think their locker room, I’m not in the locker room obviously, but I’ve coached long enough to know there’s two reasons. The head coach is obviously, he’s going to pay the ultimate price, but there’s two reasons when you lift up the hood and you take a look.”

So what went wrong for Penn State? Obviously, momentum went completely sideways. But that can happen in a hurry if Meyer is correct about his explanation.

“No. 1, you have an issue in the locker room. They’re soft,” Meyer said. “There’s something going on in that locker room. I’m not saying this is (the case), it’s one of two, though. By process of elimination, this is it. Because you can’t say talent. You can’t say that. You can’t start blaming players and saying recruiting.

“That’s nonsense. We learned that with UCLA. I hear people — I get so pissed off when I hear that. Bad players, bad — no they’re not. Now they’re not playing well. Why? Put your thinking caps on… why?”

The former head coach further expanded on the potential locker room issue at Penn State. In this day and age, it’s easy to understand how it could happen.

“No. 1, there’s a locker room issue; there’s something going on. Maybe it’s NIL,” Meyer said. “Maybe two guys are getting paid this, that. Again, I don’t know what it is, but I promise you that could be one of them.”

So what’s the second potential issue Meyer referenced? That’s also an in-house problem, but of a different variety.

“The second one, you have a staff issue,” Meyer said. “You have some two, I would say two to three people on the staff, that are cancerous or underperforming or, and once again, I do now know, but I want everyone to think about it. Because there’s no other reason. I’ve done this forever.

“Give me another reason. That’s not the reason. The shoes, the shirts, the crowd, too much pressure on them. Stop. Stop all that. There’s two reasons. One’s the locker room or one’s staff. That’s it. Obviously, only one person, or I’m sure we’ll hear stories from inside the Penn State organization, but it’s one of those two.”