Turnover. It’s the new way of the world.
Inc. magazine says 9 out of 10 workers in the United States are looking to change jobs. CNBC calls it “The Great Resignation” and in late summer reported that 55% of all Americans were likely looking for a job.
I have a new boss to start the new year. My small work group will soon be 43% new to the department. My daughter, who has her chemical engineering degree from Penn State, left Exxon during the pandemic to work for L’Oreal.
Penn State has a new president.
You no doubt have your own stories to tell.
College football, fueled by NIL and a portal greased to move and ridiculous salaries, is the personification of the trend.
The Athletic – owned in part by a Penn State alum and having undergone its own turnover of sorts this week, having been purchased by The New York Times for $550 million – the other day reported that more than 1,300 college football players have entered the transfer portal at the FBS level (major college football) since August. And counting.
Penn State’s list of portal departures includes Ta’Quan Roberson, Des Holmes, Norval Black, Enzo Jennings and Tyer Randolph. Two retirements, by Winston Eubanks and Aeneas Hawkins, have further thinned the Nittany Lions’ roster.
Penn State’s only known portal addition is high-profile wide receiver Mitchell Tinsley (130 rec., 1,779 yards, 18 TDs), who has enrolled in class at Penn State, which begins its spring semester on Monday. He’ll be joined by 10 new Nittany Lion scholarshipped athletes, who committed to Penn State in December and graduated in time to start 2022 as college students. That group includes five-stars Drew Allar (QB) and Nicholas Singleton (RB).
Only two of the 10 are linemen – JB Nelson, an offensive tackle from Lackawanna College, and Zane Durant, a D-lineman from Florida. This is important because Penn State’s biggest needs on both sides of the ball are in the trenches and at linebacker. Two LBs do arrive in May. But James Franklin’s predilection for wide receivers remains strongest of all – this year’s crop of signees is PSU’s second in three years that have five WR’s in it, according to recruiting guru Ryan Snyder of Penn State On3.
There’s a saying among old school footballers: Bigs win big games. In the world of roster management, the Nittany Lions need a big turnover in the trenches.
The return of PJ Mustipher will help in measurable ways on defense. But the O-line needs to be bigger and better, on the field and the roster, and tougher. Especially on gameday. Penn State returns just 36 starts on the O-line, so any experienced help must come through the portal.
• • •
Franklin this week lost his longtime strength and conditioning coach, Dwight Galt III, to retirement. They worked together for 19 years, at Maryland, Vanderbilt and Penn State.
A few days before that, Franklin lost his long-time do-it-all administrator and in-house Radar O’Reilly, Michael Hazel, to Virginia Tech. They worked together for 11 years, many of them in 24/7 fashion. They are so close Franklin presided over the marriage of Hazel and his wife Molly.
Before that, Franklin lost his defensive coordinator, Brent Pry, who left to take the head coaching job at Virginia Tech. They worked together for 11 years and have known each other for two-and-a-half times that.
It also appears that offensive analyst Ken Whisenhunt, the former NFL head coach, is gone, while the status of Larry Lewis, a Penn State analyst since 2017 and Franklin’s former boss at Idaho State in 1999, is uncertain.
As frequently funny @faux_franklin Tweeted this week: “Will the last one leaving pls turn the lights off?”
Retirement is natural, and both Pry and Hazel left for bigger job titles, more responsibilities, more money. Their successes at Penn State – Franklin’s successes at Penn State – afforded them their opportunities.
They were three of Franklin’s top four consigliere throughout his reign at Vandy and Penn State. (The last Tom Hagen standing is Kevin Threlkel, who has been with Franklin since Kansas State, remains as assistant A.D. and chief of staff.)
If James had a question or concern; needed a heart-to-heart or a gut-check; wanted a special project run; or desired a temperature check of the players or coaches or staff, he went to Pry. Or Deege. Or Hazel.
Their off-the-field counsel was a vital part of Franklin’s secret sauce. They knew the pulse of the program – from interns to veteran starters – and the pulse of Penn State, as well as the community. I’d often exchange pleasantries with Pry at the local Giant, when we were picking up groceries. Galt’s wife, Jan, would drop off cookies post-practice for Penn State’s players. Hazel took local fitness classes and was a guest lecturer in Penn State classes, and his Molly was active in the community.
Their combined 42 years with Franklin cannot be replaced, as good as Threlkel and the veteran recruiting tandem of Andy Frank and Kenny Sanders are.
• • •
Franklin has seen an immense amount of churn in his coaches’ room – and initiated some of it – the past few years.
Only two of the 10 fulltime coaching assistants currently on his staff have spent more than two seasons coaching actual games at Penn State: cornerback coach Terry Smith (beginning his ninth season) and Ja’Juan Seider, beginning his fifth season as Penn State’s running backs coach. There have been reports that Seider had been pursued by both Florida State and Florida this week, and that he spurned offers from both to head back to his home state.
Of the other eight, three assistants have coached two seasons (2020-21) at Penn State; three have coached one season (2021) at Penn State; and two are brand new to Penn State (DC Manny Diaz and ST coordinator Stacy Collins).
Right now, Smith (101 games) and Seider (48) have coached more games at Penn State than the rest of the staff combined (105 games). Heck, Smith can almost claim that distinction. New blood can be good; it can also take time to learn and jell.
Since the end of the 2016 season, Franklin has had 17 new hires on his coaching staff – and counting. That’s 3.4 new hires a season, with two years at 4. That’s a turnover rate of 33%. Even with the portal, it seems that the players last longer in one place than the assistant coaches these days – especially given that Sean Clifford and Jonathan Sutherland are on Year No. 6.
Penn State is not alone in this regard. For comparison’s sake, all they need to do is up in the Big Ten Conference’s East division standings.
Ohio State is 18-3 in the past two seasons, with a 13-1 record in the Big Ten and a slot in the 2020 College Football Playoff. Yet, head coach Ryan Day has made big changes at defensive coordinator, first in midseason and then in December, bringing in Oklahoma State’s Jim Knowles at $1.9 million. Also, this week he axed sixth-year offensive line coach Greg Studrawa, who had coached several All-Big Ten selections and multiple NFL draft picks.
At Michigan, Jim Harbaugh cleaned house after the Wolverines went 2-4 in 2020. He brought in six new assistant coaches, two of them Michigan men and two who worked for his brother John with the NFL Baltimore Ravens. None of his 10 assistants is older than 43. Roots, youth, innovation, NFL expertise. The blend worked: Michigan won East division and Big Ten titles; made it to the CFP; and finished 8-1 and 12-2. Harbaugh, hired a year after Franklin and who took a big pay cut last year while Franklin was angling for more money, has surpassed his success. Harbaugh is 61-24 overall and 42-17 in the Big Ten, with that CFP spot; Franklin is 67-34 and 42-28.
Meanwhile, Michigan State went all in the past two years, hiring Mel Tucker and paying him almost $100 mil, who brought in a new staff and almost a dozen-and-a-half transfers. including running back Kenneth Walker II, who finished sixth in the 2021 Heisman voting. MSU went 11-2 overall and 7-2 in the Big Ten in 2021.
• • •
Through it all, Franklin has remained at PSU. Through thin and thick and thin. Much to his credit.
Though it hasn’t come without a struggle.
James has flirted with new opportunities as if he were a kard-karrying Kardashian. He is already on his fourth contract at Penn State, which sounds like a lot when you’ve been on the job for two days shy of nine years and have been exactly .500 in your last 22 games, which is not good. (His bosses, Eric Barron and Sandy Barbour, have each had two contracts in roughly the same period of time.)
Yet, Franklin remains the lynchpin and cornerstone of Penn State football, now more than ever. As he begins his ninth season at Penn State – his hiring anniversary date of Jan. 11, 2014 is on Tuesday – he ranks No. 3 in tenure in the Big Ten, trailing only Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz (1999) and Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald (2006).
Franklin is a constant in an “industry (that) is lacking any sort of consistency,” the website Fivethirtyeight.com noted in its story last week on the dizzying coaching carousal in college football.
“When next season kicks off, at least 14 Power Five teams will debut new coaches, tying the high-water mark from the past decade,” the site’s Jake Lourim wrote. “The 65 Power Five coaches as they stand now will enter next fall with an average of 4.2 years at their current schools, down from this season’s 4.6 years. Just over half (33 of 65) will be entering at least their fourth season.”
Franklin has doubled that average.
This season, he will pass Hugo Bezdek to move up to No. 4 on the longevity chart among Penn State head football coaches. As it stands now:
Coach/years Games W-L-T Win %
Joe Paterno, 1966-2011 548 409-136-3 .749
Bob Higgins, 1930-48 159 91-57-11 .607
Rip Engle, 1950-65 156 104-48-4 .679
Hugo Bezdek, 1918-29 106 65-30-11 .665
James Franklin, 2014-2022 101 67-34 .663
• • •
This is a pivotal year for Franklin, despite his Coach For a Decade contract.
He has already replaced his defensive coordinator (a good hire). And replaced his special teams coordinator (apparently the second-best ST coordinator among Western Oregon alumni). He must replace one of his key right-hand men. He must replace his strength and conditioning coach. He must find linebackers, offensive linemen and defensive linemen in the portal.
He must manage a quarterback room – and locker room — that includes a sixth-year veteran and a five-star rookie. He must find production from a running back room bereft of 100-yard rushers and packed to the gills with six scholarship backs, all of whom are anxious to carry the football, and all of them equally anxious to see how many carries ultimately go to Singleton.
He begins the week in San Antonio, at the American Football Coaches Association convention. He might be interviewing for some slots that are open now, some slots that could be opening soon and some slots that are sure to be open if Penn State suffers through another 7-6 season.
• • •
A few final words about football turnovers. The on-the-field kind.
And, with Manny Diaz in the house, you can’t do a story on turnovers of any sort without mentioning The Turnover Chain.
Penn State’s defense forced 21 turnovers last season (14 picks, seven fumbles), ranking them an impressive No. 29 in the country, under Pry.
Miami (Fla.), where Diaz was the head coach and defensive signal-caller in 2021, had just 11 – 118th in the nation (out of 130). Diaz, the mastermind behind The Turnover Chain as defensive coordinator with the Hurricanes, saw a precipitous drop in turnovers during his time in Coral Gables.
The ’Canes led the nation with 31 turnovers in 2017, when Diaz was in his second season as DC under head coach Mark Richt. They dropped to 25, then to 20, then to 16, and then to, finally, 11. That’s a trend that, in the end, helped get Diaz fired.
Now, it’s his turn on a defense that must restock LBU and keep the fire alive in a group that yielded just over 17 points in 2021.
