For all the frustrated fans begging their favorite school to immediately fire their coach, take a look at Penn State.
Under first-year coach Matt Campbell, Penn State is 3-2. The Nittany Lions, who started the season ranked 18th, have lost their last two games to Wisconsin and Northwestern. Already 12th in the Big Ten, Penn State has No. 19 USC this weekend, then an equally declining Michigan team the following week. Northwestern outscored Penn State 506-291 in its 34-13 victory last Friday.
James Franklin doesn’t look so bad now, does he?
Almost exactly a year ago, Penn State AD Pat Kraft fired Franklin. Penn State pulled the plug on Oct. 12 after a loss to…Northwestern dropped the program to 3-3. Franklin had guided Penn State to a College Football Playoff semifinal appearance the previous season, but Penn State had had enough of his antics after 12 seasons and thought it could do better. Penn State wanted a coach more capable of winning a national championship.
There are lessons in this.
It is obvious that the grass is not always greener on the other side. There comes a point when a fan base and/or administration gets tired of what they have that any alternative sounds better.
For all his faults, Franklin was not a bad football coach. This is evident in the fact that he already has Virginia Tech (4-1), a controversial game away from a 5-0 record in his first season in Blacksburg.
But even if you thought it was time to leave Franklin — and there’s a valid argument that it might have been — you still need to land the plane with the right person to follow it and take over the program. And from the moment Penn State fired Franklin, there was considerable skepticism in the industry about the school’s ability to recruit the caliber of coach that justified its decision.
Early options like Nebraska’s Matt Rhule, Texas A&M’s Mike Elko and Indiana’s Curt Cignetti were quickly ruled out. Despite fan speculation, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer was never a serious option.
A complicated process
The longer this dragged on, the worse things got for Kraft and Penn State. Firing your head coach mid-season can give you an edge over the competition, but it can also invite a lot of cooks into the kitchen. More and more people will insert themselves into the process, from current and former players to boosters to admins. This can make an already cumbersome process even more cumbersome and likely to lead to disaster.
As the process feels more like a mess, it makes rookies and current players nervous. Kraft’s decision to shut down in mid-October turned into a recruiting disaster for the Nittany Lions. Twenty-four recruits decommitted from Penn State — yes, you read that number correctly — which turned a class ranked in the top 20 into one that finished outside the top 60. Penn State signed the third-worst class in the Big Ten and finished nationally behind programs such as Syracuse, Rutgers, Appalachian State, Temple and, yes, Franklin’s Virginia Tech Hokies. In fact, 11 former Penn State commits followed Franklin to VT.
Penn State kicked around a number of potential candidates, including then-James Madison coach Bob Chesney, former New York Giants coach Brian Daboll and Louisville coach Jeff Brohm. (Penn State coach Bob Chesney, a Pennsylvania native, would have a pleasant impression these days). As time passed, word grew that Kraft had locked in on a mystery candidate who was later revealed to be BYU’s Kalani Sitake.
Penn State thought it had Sitake on board, only for him to back out and stay home after the Cougars made the Big 12 championship game.
Sitake is a very good football coach, who has BYU in the playoff race again this season, but even before we got back to him, there were questions about Happy Valley’s suitability. Born in Tonga, Sitake played at BYU, and the only times he left Utah State during his coaching career were for Eastern Arizona and Oregon State. This would have been a major culture shock for Sitake, and there were questions about whether his recruitment would have translated to Penn State.
Late decision
As internal and external pressure mounted on Kraft to deliver a coach, the PSU AD set its sights on Iowa State’s Campbell. It felt like a wise late process pivot for Kraft, as the narrative around his marathon 54-day coaching search suggested Penn State was being rejected left and right.
Campbell had succeeded for years at a nontraditional powerhouse with far fewer resources than Penn State. He had been picky about what type of job would take him out of Ames, turning down interest from lesser Power 4 schools over the years. Penn State made sense because it was a job worth choosing.
The timing and losing so many recruits and current players to the transfer portal forced Campbell to bring 24 Iowa State players with him to State College. Bringing in quarterback Rocco Becht was a no-brainer, but questions arose from the start about how a full roster of players from an 8-4 Iowa State team would fare in the Big Ten.
Turns out it’s not great so far.
There’s still plenty of time for Campbell to get going at Penn State. He proved to be a good coach, but he didn’t have to deal with the pros and cons of running an expensive roster while at Iowa State. Worst case scenario, the man who thrived under the lower expectations of Ames cannot live up to the much higher expectations of Happy Valley. Seven and eight winning seasons (of which he had six) give you job security at Iowa State. They get you fired at Penn State.
Recruiting is improving – Penn State currently has the 20th-ranked recruiting class, according to 247Sports, although that’s still only good for the seventh-best Big Ten class. The back half of the schedule looks more manageable, but if PSU is eliminated against Northwestern, everything appears to be on the table.
The Penn State disaster serves as a warning to any athletic director considering firing a football coach this cycle. First of all, are you sure you want to do this? And second, what’s the benefit of doing it now?
Nearly a year after Penn State stunned the sport by firing Franklin, it seems no coincidence that no Power Four has pulled the plug on their coach thus far. The benefit of rushing to fire a coach in order to get a head start before the first day of signing and the transfer portal has its limits.
In a world where there seemingly isn’t one, PSU’s experience has shown that patience can be a virtue when firing a coach.
Gn sports
