Virginia Tech has received widespread praise for hiring former Penn State coach James Franklin this week, including a strong endorsement from legendary former Florida and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer.
Addressing the hire on The Triple Option podcast with Mark Ingram and Rob Stone, Meyer was asked if it was a good move.
“I don’t think it’s a good one — I think it’s a great one,” the three-time national-championship-winning coach said. “I’m a James Franklin fan. I coached against him. You know, it’s all well-documented about the top of the food chain — he just couldn’t quite get there — but you know, a lot of people didn’t. He’s still a quality coach that won a high percentage of his games at a tough spot. I think it’s a great [hire].”
Meyer was referencing Franklin’s well-noted 4-21 record vs. top-10 teams while at Penn State, though one of those four wins came in 2016 when Franklin’s unranked Penn State team beat No. 2 Ohio State, 24-21, followed by narrow one-point Buckeyes wins the next two years when both were top-10 teams at the time.
No, Franklin didn’t win a national championship at Penn State, but he did go 104-45, including double-digit wins in six of his 11 full seasons and a run to the College Football Playoff semifinals just last year.
Franklin was fired in October after a 3-3 start to the season, including stunning losses to UCLA and Northwestern, after the Nittany Lions opened ranked No. 2.
John Rocovich, Timothy Sands, James Franklin and Whit Babcock hold up a Virginia Tech jersey during a press conference / Brian Bishop-Imagn Images
Meyer expounded on why this was a great hire for Virginia Tech, meanwhile.
“I wrote this down here … Dan Lanning, Ryan Day, Kirby Smart, Lincoln Riley, Sherrone Moore, [Brent] Venables, [Marcus] Freeman, these are all the hot-shot coordinators that got jobs. Back when I was a young coach, you had to go to the MAC, you had to go to the smaller conferences and work your way up because it was very rare — I think Bob Stoops was one of the first ones to ever go from a coordinator to a blue blood [head coaching job].
“It just didn’t happen,” Meyer said. “And then you have Lane Kiffin, Sark (Steve Sarkisian), James Franklin, [Kalen] DeBoer, [Curt] Cignetti, [Mike] Elko, these are guys who worked their way up, they’re established coaches.
“I have friends who are assistant ADs and behind the scenes talking to them a little bit, that’s a helluva decision right now — hotshot coordinators at Oregon, two excellent coordinators, how about the hotshot coordinators at Indiana, what about [Ohio State OC] Brian Hartline? Those guys normally would do what?
“They’d go take a Bowling Green job, a Toledo job, Memphis or Houston, like Tom Herman did when he left Ohio State, and then Texas would go get him. Because of salaries, you’re not going to the MAC anymore. … So now an AD has to pull the string on a guy he really doesn’t know.”
Or hire an established winner like Franklin.
Notably, Virginia Tech’s last hire was a “hotshot” coordinator in Brent Pry, who was Franklin’s defensive coordinator at Penn State. But Pry went just 16-24 with the Hokies and was fired three games into this season (his fourth overall).
This time, Virginia Tech opted to go with a proven commodity — to Meyer’s approval.
