Franklin Fired -It’s over...

RickinDayton said:
OK, he's gone but I can't rejoice over turmoil and I can't hate in the man. Kraft did what had to be done. CJF has plenty of $ for him and his family to find a nice place to settle down. After the smoke clears he'll probably end up on TV next year.
Now, interim HC Terry Smith has yeoman work ahead to try to steady this football team (coaches & players).
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Agree. JF is a good guy. He's everything you want in a CFB coach except the actual FB coaching. He reached his Peter Principle, but he is set for life, as are his kids and grand kids if they do it right.
 
GregInPitt said:
I don't believe it's a bad look. Player loyalty is a great thing. I would be proud of my son do have done the same. And then I would expect him to go all in for whoever is in charge the remainder of the season. These are young men that are used to expressing themselves on social media.

And it doesn't call into question his attitude for the rest of the season. It doesn't say anything about his love for Terry Smith who likely had a big role in bringing him to PSU as Smith has been Defensive Recruiting Coordinator for some time in addition to being heavily involved in the recruiting of any DB.
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Greg, I understand and said in the post that player loyalty is admirable. In this case, however, the wording could have...and should have...been stated differently.

Zakee should have "expressed himself" on the field against a winless and 4-TD underdog UCLA last week...and yesterday against 3-TD underdog Northwestern...and two weeks ago in overtime when a stop on D would have won the game.

Now he wants to blame fans for Franklin's firing. Total BS. He and his loyal friends need to look in the mirror.
 
Jerry said:
Greg, I understand and said in the post that player loyalty is admirable. In this case, however, the wording could have...and should have...been stated differently.

Zakee should have "expressed himself" on the field against a winless and 4-TD underdog UCLA last week...and yesterday against 3-TD underdog Northwestern...and two weeks ago in overtime when a stop on D would have won the game.

Now he wants to blame fans for Franklin's firing. Total BS. He and his loyal friends need to look in the mirror.
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I just don't agree with you. Zakee is a very young man and he's expressing himself the way he wants which is based on his love for his coach and I believe we as adults should understand that. It's an emotional response and as time goes he likely will see the business side of this more so, but right now it impacts him much more personally than it does you and I.

And Zakee has had a high level career on the field for PSU. We don't know all of his on the field assignments vs UCLA or any other team for that matter. Do we really know what the root cause of the UCLA loss is? I don't believe so. But from what I saw it was the UCLA QB who outplayed the PSU defense, as well as the PSU defense really not being nearly as good as we had hoped. PSU lost 3 of the top 4 DE's and 3 of the top 4 DT's and when a team at any level replaces very experienced Dlinemen, "men", with boys it will likely experience a drop off. Some here underestimate the losses from last year's team to the NFL and otherwise, and Franklin didn't help his cause when he said he had the best personnel that he ever had during his PSU tenure. He should let the results speak for themselves and I hope he learned that to take to his next job. UCLA's WR's were better than PSU's as well even though Franklin went out and got 3 from the portal. Lots of reason for the last two losses that have already been discussed here. Franklin's loyalty to Singleton include.

All he said is that those outside the locker room were the cause of Franklin's firing and that is true. Nothing for me to get upset about or criticize a player for that was and still is much more emotionally attached to Franklin than some here believe or now recognize.
 
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GregInPitt said:
I just don't agree with you. Zakee is a very young man and he's expressing himself the way he wants which is based on his love for his coach and I believe we as adults should understand that. It's an emotional response and as time goes he likely will see the business side of this more so, but right now it impacts him much more personally than it does you and I.

And Zakee has had a high level career on the field for PSU. We don't know all of his on the field assignments vs UCLA or any other team for that matter. Do we really know what the root cause of the UCLA loss is? I don't believe so. But from what I saw it was the UCLA QB who outplayed the PSU defense, as well as the PSU defense really not being nearly as good as we had hoped. PSU lost 3 of the top 4 DE's and 3 of the top 4 DT's and when a team at any level replaces very experienced Dlinemen, "men", with boys it will likely experience a drop off. Some here underestimate the losses from last year's team to the NFL and otherwise, and Franklin didn't help his cause when he said he had the best personnel that he ever had during his PSU tenure. He should let the results speak for themselves and I hope he learned that to take to his next job.

All he said is that those outside the locker room were the cause of Franklin's firing and that is true. Nothing for me to get upset about or criticize a player for that was and still is much more emotionally attached to Franklin that some here believe or now recognize.
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We'll agree to disagree.

He could have said: "I (we) love Coach Franklin and always will." Wonderful message of support. I'd be totally behind it.

Instead he blamed the fans. I mean, who else did he mean?

But it wasn't the fans playing D when Oregon used four plays to score two TDs in OT two weeks ago...or when a totally moribund winless UCLA offense rolled over Penn State last week...or when 3-TD underdog Northwestern had no trouble moving the ball against our D yesterday.

There are a lot of people to blame for what happened today. Franklin himself...the coordinators...the players. The fans had no part in it.

I say this as somebody who's been one of our coach's big boosters over the years and who condemned the abuse hurled at him by chickenshit "fans" after the game yesterday.

My point, however, is that Zakee and his teammates need to look in the mirror before they start posturing about the fans. Oh, and I hope the next guy also tells his D to stop the strutting and taunting after every garden-variety tackle. Frankly, that little act is part of the problem.
 
27Pellis said:
I understand your point, and I don’t ( largely) disagree….but does ANYBODY really have better context than the players? I doubt it
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On his whole career at PSU? They were in elementary school when he started. And not even thought of when Joe won his 2 NCs.That's why Franklin was fired. It was done here before, so we expect it again.
 
Jerry said:
We'll agree to disagree.

He could have said: "I (we) love Coach Franklin and always will." Wonderful message of support. I'd be totally behind it.

Instead he blamed the fans. I mean, who else did he mean?

But it wasn't the fans playing D when Oregon used four plays to score two TDs in OT two weeks ago...or when a totally moribund winless UCLA offense rolled over Penn State last week...or when 3-TD underdog Northwestern had no trouble moving the ball against our D yesterday.

There are a lot of people to blame for what happened today. Franklin himself...the coordinators...the players. The fans had no part in it.

I say this as somebody who's been one of our coach's big boosters over the years and who condemned the abuse hurled at him by chickenshit "fans" after the game yesterday.

My point, however, is that Zakee and his teammates need to look in the mirror before they start posturing about the fans. Oh, and I hope the next guy also tells his D to stop the strutting and taunting after every garden-variety tackle. Frankly, that little act is part of the problem.
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He could have been referring to the administration.

It doesn't bother me that he blamed the fans. The fans were booing and players don't like to be boo'd and I don't blame them. Although it seems that the booing was probably mainly directed to Franklin, as he had says, he takes full responsibility..... But the players were on the field and it's not a nice experience as a young athlete to be boo'd.

I don't believe they were "posturing". Just the reactions of young men that put their souls into working towards this season and are probably more disappointed than any fans are about the recent results.
 
Sheriff Coffee said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1977438733583728899
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Nice comment by Fashanu. But Franklin deserves some of the blame for this season's expectations with his pre season comments such as best personnel this year since I have been the coach here, or something to that effect. The team lost a lot of talent - Carter, King, 3 DE's, 3 DT's, REED at Safety, the only legit big play receiver in Warren. Franklin should have been more cautious with his build up as it's not easy to replace the key cogs of a final 4 team, and Allar has proven that he has not performed on the biggest stages thru his first 2 years as a starter and it's hard to win big games without a big game QB. Franklin should have kept his mouth shut more so. As Joe used to say "you know, the other teams want to win too..."

I really had some reservations about this season given the player losses.

The comment about no one wanting the job is just his opinion. But PSU didn't seem to be able to lure a big deal coach to PSU back then the way OSU got Urban. Really, O'Brien did a decent job with what he had to work with but he just wasn't cut out to be a long term PSU coach.

It's going to be interesting to see who wants the job now, even for big money.
 
I see a lot of similarity between John Cooper at OSU and Franklin. In 98, Cooper had a great team that finished 2d [based on a loss to a mis-matched msu team]. 2 years later he had something like a 6-6 team and the athletic director stated that he had lost control of the team and was fired. Not a great coach but a great recruiter. OSU didn't go after big names and hired Tressel who had an extremely good record at YSU. (similar to Cignetti). Interesting thing to me is that even after being fired, Cooper remained loyal to OSU.
 
Jerry said:
Zakee and company were rolled by winless UCLA a week ago, which set the stage for Franklin's shock firing today. So Zakee doesn't have a lot of credibility now with the indignation thing. Too little too late, Zakee. You had your chance against UCLA...and a week before that against Oregon in overtime. And y'all came up small.

Still, I respect and admire devotion to their former coach on the part of players whether past or present. But the point is, it's a bad look when a current player sends out a Tweet like that at a time like this. It also calls into question his attitude going forward this season.

I think this is a sad ending for a guy who did a lot of very good things at Penn State but who couldn't quite get over the hump and had to deal with the league's obvious bias against our program, which no doubt wears on a person.

In the end, it just wasn't happening for the guy and there comes a time, however painful, when a change has to be made. That time arrived with the spectacular implosion of a season that started with sky-high excitement and expectations.

All this said, to the fans who rained profane abuse on Franklin in the tunnel as he exited the field yesterday: you people are scum...and a disgrace to the university and its football program.
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Zakee is virtually the ONLY one who has credibility. Pretty sure nobody on this board has put on a jock for 20+ years, and I’m certain nobody here has played for the man. — Everyone here has their opinion… some reasonable, some self serving. Regardless, they are entitled to it. But nobody here has more credibility than the players. To them there is no ( nor should there be ) line between a siloed business arrangement, and a personal loss. Players have credibility, posters have opinions.
 
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LionDeNittany said:
One bad season... LOL

And no... plenty of people wanted the Penn State Job.

It's some kind of urban legend that coaches of schools like Vanderbilt didn't want 3x pay and a 3x better program to work with.

Heck, at the height of the mess we got an NFL superbowl winning OC
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Franklin d
GregInPitt said:
Nice comment by Fashanu. But Franklin deserves some of the blame for this season's expectations with his pre season comments such as best personnel this year since I have been the coach here, or something to that effect. The team lost a lot of talent - Carter, King, 3 DE's, 3 DT's, REED at Safety, the only legit big play receiver in Warren. Franklin should have been more cautious with his build up as it's not easy to replace the key cogs of a final 4 team, and Allar has proven that he has not performed on the biggest stages thru his first 2 years as a starter and it's hard to win big games without a big game QB. Franklin should have kept his mouth shut more so. As Joe used to say "you know, the other teams want to win too..."

I really had some reservations about this season given the player losses.

The comment about no one wanting the job is just his opinion. But PSU didn't seem to be able to lure a big deal coach to PSU back then the way OSU got Urban. Really, O'Brien did a decent job with what he had to work with but he just wasn't cut out to be a long term PSU coach.

It's going to be interesting to see who wants the job now, even for big money.
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Franklin became arrogant and built an adversarial relationship with the fans, in my opinion. There likely would have been more good will if he had behaved and communicated better with the fans. Again, just how i see it.
 
Dailybuck777 said:
I see a lot of similarity between John Cooper at OSU and Franklin. In 98, Cooper had a great team that finished 2d [based on a loss to a mis-matched msu team]. 2 years later he had something like a 6-6 team and the athletic director stated that he had lost control of the team and was fired. Not a great coach but a great recruiter. OSU didn't go after big names and hired Tressel who had an extremely good record at YSU. (similar to Cignetti). Interesting thing to me is that even after being fired, Cooper remained loyal to OSU.
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Agree. Also similar to Mark Richt, UGA
 
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