Timing, intense approach brought Gabe Franklin to West Virginia
Gabe Franklin might appear soft-spoken off the field, but the West Virginia safeties coach is anything but that on the practice field with his position group.
“That’s why my voice is gone,” Franklin told reporters.
The safeties coach likes to be cool and collected off the field, but once he gets between the lines, he transforms into a different person with a high level of intensity.
That meshes perfectly with what head coach Rich Rodriguez demands out of both his coaches and players on a daily basis and it didn’t take long for him to fit in like a glove on that front.
“I love it. It’s life-changing. Once you buy into it, everything you do is hard work,” he said.
That’s the message that Franklin brings to his position group of nine players each practice and it projects itself in something as simple as not jogging on the field but sprinting for their reps.
That hard-nosed mentality is perhaps even more important at safety, where players are required to come down and lay hits on opposing ball carriers or wide receivers with authority.
“Once you hit that field, you’ve got to turn that switch,” he said.
The fit is one that Franklin might not have even known would be as good when he first interviewed for the position in the winter. That’s because he had no previous ties to Rodriguez and instead kept in touch with defensive coordinator Zac Alley.
Alley had tried to hire Franklin at every stop of his coaching career, but the assistant wasn’t quite ready to return to the game. Franklin last coached the college game at Boise State in 2019-20, but after COVID-19 elected to take a break from the profession.
Franklin moved to Dallas, Texas, and took a year off when his youngest daughter was born in order to spend time helping raise her as a stay-at-home father. Then he completed his master’s degree and decided to get back into the coaching and teaching business at Timberview High School.
That’s when his phone rang, and it was Alley on the other end.
All the time, while Franklin wasn’t coaching college football, he was still watching and studying before he got the job coaching at the high school level.
“Come back with some new ideas, refresh. It was a great time for me to get mentally ready and get back to coaching. So brought some new ideas, new techniques,” Franklin said.
It had to be the right place at the right time to bring him back to college and the timing seemed to work out at West Virginia once he interviewed for the job. West Virginia was that place and Rodriguez was that coach to bring him back, so he said yes when presented the opportunity.
“I interviewed him, I really liked, you could see he had production in the past and was really impressed with him in his interview process and really impressed with him since then. He’s a sharp guy, good recruiter and I think the players respect him,” Rodriguez said.
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