Penn State Football weekly chat: Will James Franklin land at Virginia Tech?

As the 2025 Penn State Football season winds to a close, the college football coaching carousel is about to heat up. While the attention for Penn State fans is squarely on their own coaching search, the environement in which its conducted is certainly part of the story. This week, fans want to know about the realities of former head coach James Franklin landing at regional recruiting rival Virginia Tech. Today’s chat spends a good deal of time discussing the former coach, what went wrong in the end for him with the Nittany Lions, and what’s next for the relationship with the former leader of the program.

Here’s a cross-section of our weekly chat.

• Is the Franklin to VT smoke real, and how bad would that be for us in recruiting/retention?
• Would you classify James Franklin as a “dude”?
• Will the new coach position the PSU job as a rebuilding process in order to get more time or will he be required to say that the program just needs some adjustments to reach the top of the mountain?
• Is Chaz Coleman a Nittany Lion in 2026? Koby Howard?

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Terry Smith explains in-game adjustments for Penn State fans

There’s a long-held belief that the head coach can override any playcall he doesn’t like on the headset between plays. Interim head coach Terry Smith explained that the situation is much different from what fans think and that the influence is more guiding than dictating.

“Yeah, I’m on the headset,” Smith said. “So when offense is up, I hear them. When the defense is up, I hear them. I sit quiet, I hear everything. If I don’t know what something is. I ask a question, but Coach Kotelnicki and Coach Knowles, they have 100 percent power to make the calls. In between series is when I may ask questions in the sense of, why did we do this? Why did we do that? Why didn’t we make this call, why didn’t we make that call? But you can’t interrupt a play caller in the middle of his flow and rhythm during the series.”

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BWI Weekend Chat –Nov. 14

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