On Thursday, James Franklin played Meet The Press for the first time in two months — 61 days, to be exact, a span from post-Blue-White Game to a session with mostly local media Thursday afternoon in Holuba Hall.
Franklin had been literally coast-to-coast since then, from California for Big Ten meetings to various NIL fund-raising appearances throughout the East to hosting recruits and campers. On Thursday, he was back on campus for the annual Lift For Life event.
He took twentysomething minutes to do a Q&A with a small cadre of beat reporters after taking what is traditionally his longest hiatus from talking with the local media, sans for interviews with preseason mags and websites.
Here are 10 takeaways from that session with Franklin, who at age 52 carries an 88-39 record into his 11th preseason summer camp – in about five weeks hence — as the head coach of Penn State football:
1. Penn State’s White Out game for the 2024 season has not been formally selected, though Franklin has a good idea of which contest it will be. Though he’s not telling. “As you can imagine, if I could tell you, I would. I literally walked out of a meeting with Pat (Kraft, AD), Vinnie (James, deputy AD and football administrator) and (chief of staff) Kevin Threlkel, and that was one of the topics…I don’t even completely know. I think I have a pretty good idea where it is trending, but I don’t know that. The worst thing I could do is say one thing to you guys and it changes. Or, even saying it to you guys, it impacts the chance of it happening by pissing some people off. I don’t want to do that.”
2. The White Out decision is largely out of Penn State’s hands.TV is calling the shots. “To be honest with you, it is not solely my answer. Or Pat’s answer. If we want to provide the opponent, the experience, the time of day that our fan base wants and expects, there’s a lot of pushing and pulling and compromising and working with the conference and working with TV partners to try to find win-win for everybody.”
3. Franklin’s preference for the White Out? The top two priorities: “You like the opponent and the time of day.” (I’m reading that as Ohio State on Nov. 2 at night, a toughie with Big Noon looming.)
4. The recently-approved $700 million to renovate Beaver Stadium is more for all of Penn State rather than just football. “I was always of the belief that Holuba, the practice field and Lasch (football building) were the most important things for our football program — the buildings we’re in 365 days a year, from a development standpoint for players and from a training perspective. Once that was taken care of, Beaver Stadium was the next thing. To me, Beaver Stadium is more about the athletic department, the university, the community and the state — and, specifically, the other sports — really more than it is about football.”
5. Why renovate Beaver Stadium? Mo’ money. “I think we have one of the best environments in college football. But, we weren’t going to be able to sustain that when we hadn’t really updated the stadium in a long period of time… This is going to allow football to support all those entities we just talked about. And also give us the ability to increase revenue when you’re talking about the opportunity to have more concerts there. I think it’s going to have a big factor in playoff games, because we had some of the challenges of the exposed pipes that we are already starting to work on. And you’re talking about Flyers-Penguins, just different activities you can have there year-round, so (football) is not the only factor that has a chance to bring in revenue seven days a year.”
6. The Penn State players conducted a vote for team captains a few weeks ago, with the potential to head into summer drills with clearly defined leadership. There were no clear favorites, so Franklin opted to not appoint any captains. Just yet. “This will give us an opportunity to continue to evaluate and give the players to earn that from their teammates and the staff and then we’ll vote (again).”
7. Penn State will likely pay all $22 million on student-athlete payments in 2025-26, now permitted by the recent settlement of the House v. NCAA case. “As you can imagine, there is still a ton to work through and figure out. That was a big part of the discussions at the Big Ten meetings in California, with the commissioner, with the ADs, with all the head football coaches. Although we got a pretty good idea where this is going, kind of big picture, how it is going to play out on all of the different campuses is going to be very different. Some schools will not be able to meet the ($22 million student-athlete payment) threshold. They won’t have the revenue to do it. I think we’ll be a program that will.”
8. Franklin said he is unsure how much of the $22 million annual pay-out will go to football players. “But also you’ll have Title IX factors in that as well. There’s a lot that goes into it. I don’t have enough information right now to answer the question intelligently and specifically enough, because the details have not been worked out yet.”
9. A few years ago Franklin almost hired former Penn State star D-lineman Jordan Hill, who was recently named as Penn State football’s director of life skills. “But, it didn’t align with his family at the time.”
10. Franklin was not asked and did not address the recent decision by a jury to award Dr. Scott Lynch $5.25 million in a wrongful termination suit that implicated Franklin, who was dropped as a defendant in the former team physician’s lawsuit four years ago because of the statute of limitations.
