“I don’t want Penn State to become the kind of a place where an 8-2 season is a tragedy. You can’t tell kids that a football loss is a tragedy. It’s not.” –Joe Paterno 1971
Given the events of the past two weeks, it’s fair to ask if Penn State has indeed become the kind of place where a football loss is viewed as a tragedy. In two weeks, Penn State went from a top-five team to firing a coach who’d had a very good three-year run heading into this fall.
Consider these numbers. In 2026 if Penn State makes the buyouts they are contractually obligated to make, as it stands now they will be paying about 3.9% of its total athletics budget to a former head coach—roughly $12 of every ticket sold at Beaver Stadium next year. If you throw in the potential for the two coordinators’ buyouts into the mix, it’s 6.1% of the athletics budget and roughly $19 of every ticket sold to pay for three former coaches.
We got here because last year’s run to the national semifinals was seen as this year’s starting point.
In the 2011 season, the New York Giants won the NFC East with a 9-7 record and went on to win the Super Bowl. The next year Tom Coughlin was asked what his Super Bowl Championship team could possibly need to improve on.
“We were a 9-7 team last year. There is a lot we need to improve on.”
While prepping for this season’s “Nittany Game Week” shows, I looked back at the 2024 Penn State season through that Coughlin-like perspective. Penn State was a play or two away from losses at USC, Wisconsin and Minnesota (a gutsy fake punt call sealed that win). Penn State was as close to being an 8-4 team as they were to being in the national title game.
To use a baseball analogy, Penn State was standing on third base when the 2024 season ended. And teams standing on third at the end of one season are almost automatically placed on third base in the next season’s preseason polls. But once a new year kicks off every team must go to bat standing at home plate with nobody on base.
In August, talking to some friends, I casually mentioned that the Oregon game might end up being the most important game that James Franklin ever coached at Penn State. When they asked why I explained that it is never easy to surf the waves of overly optimistic expectations.
The summer was a time when the clicks were flocking to posts, sites, videos and reels that were reinforcing those expectations. The algorithm rewarded the hype. The media covering the team reacted accordingly. It built an echo chamber that pushed certain media people to top one another in stating the loftiest expectations. No one around the program was tamping them down. The fans were now juiced up to the point where nothing less than winning it all would suffice.
“But why Oregon?” one friend asked. “Even if we lose, we can still make the playoffs and win it all.”
“The non-conference schedule won’t offer any real answers. The Oregon game will be the first real test and will be seen as the indicator of whether this team can win it all.”
It turned out to be prophetic. Long before the game was decided Penn State fell behind 17-3 and fans chanted “Fire Franklin.” That was right before a thrilling fourth quarter brought the team back and forced overtime.
In the first OT, Penn State jumped ahead 24-17, having run off 21 straight points. Oregon faced a do-or-die fourth and 1. Penn State had hired a defensive coordinator that had the best red zone defense in the country last year.
Defend those 36 inches and the game would be won……
But, alas, it was not to be. And although all the team’s goals were still possible, the anger and frustration poured forth from a fan base that had spent the summer expecting nothing short of perfection.
Fan anger is symptomatic of where we are as a society. Legalized gambling has allowed fans to become even more “invested” in the outcome of games. Social media trolling is how some measure their self-worth. A loss means having to shut up and take the incoming trolls from Ohio State, Michigan or Pitt.
In the intervening 15 days, surprising losses to UCLA and Northwestern marked a collapse that was amazing both in its speed and the fan fury which it engendered.
The echo chamber now reinforced a vastly different message from the summer. A decidedly darker algorithm momentum led people to turn on the head coach. The flip of the switch in the social media world happens fast and it is nearly impossible to stop once it starts going.
It is the era of thin-skinned rabbits, people who hear everything and cannot withstand any criticism. Vocal supporters, trustees and former players who regularly posted support for James Franklin started to stay silent. They dared not unleash a torrent of negative comments on their posts. Better to let the head coach draw all the incoming fire.
So, for James Franklin as he looked around, it must have become a lonely two weeks. Which brings us to a hard truth about coaching.
Centuries ago, when great conquering Roman generals returned from a campaign to throngs of cheering people, a sage would sit next to the general and repeat over and over “Fame is fleeting, fame is fleeting, fame is fleeting…..”
It was a reminder that the adoring throngs would quickly vanish when fate’s fortunes no longer smiled upon you. Fate’s fortunes had certainly turned on Penn State.
It is disorienting for anyone to see the uncontrollable wave of negative momentum turn against them. Previously friendly media members, some of whom you fed stories to, see the future without you and turn with the page. Only from a distance can you see how the questions they ask have changed.
You find yourself fighting the tempest winds of the social media hailstorm that lashes you, your family, your players and staff.
The sudden fall can be a bewildering descent into a lonely place. You look for help from people you believed to be loyal, but their true character shows in these times.
Part of human nature is for most to flee those who are falling from grace. And it is human nature to fail to see that fall coming. The hangers-on who valued you only because you were an insider in the big show, have no use for you since you’re no longer part of it.
So why did this all happen?
The big money in college football has now created a fan base that sees the game professionalized. This is no longer an extracurricular activity of students playing for “Dear Old State.”
When highly paid coaches and highly paid players let us down, someone has to be held accountable for ruining OUR season leaving OUR lofty dreams broken.
But even still….an in-season firing at Penn State? Didn’t the 34 wins the previous three years mean anything?
Firing coaches in October was something other places did. Caving to fan pressure to fire assistants during the season was something that happened at other places. For years we looked at how dysfunctional those places were. Massive buyouts were for other schools.
Well, it’s all happening here now.
And why is all this happening here now? Perhaps we see losing as something tragic.
To that end, has Penn State become the place that we feared we might become?
Where we go next will give us our answer.
In Monday’s press conference there were lofty goals set for the program. There was a list of characteristics we wanted in a new coach. All these things are right.
However, the word “academics” was not mentioned one time. It may have been simply an oversight.
But if we are to be true to what makes Penn State unique, if we want to avoid being that place where losing a game is a tragedy, the time has come to commit to all that has made Penn State unique.
While we aspire to reach our goals on the field, it is also time to lift our football NCAA Academic Performance Ranking (APR) that has averaged next-to-last in the Big Ten for a decade. Excellence in academics and athletics is the very core of our soul at Penn State.
The two goals need not be mutually exclusive. Consider that 2024 college football national champion Ohio State was No. 1 on the field and had a perfect APR that placed them No. 1 in the classroom too.
If Ohio State can do that, Penn State sure as hell can do it too. After all, we have done it before, and we will do it again.
Penn State AD Pat Kraft has made a bold decision. Now, Penn State awaits an even bolder decision that can drive us to the core values of excellence on the field, in the classroom and with the proper perspective of what football means here at Penn State.
