James Franklin’s Penn State ousting proves schools fear losing games more than losing money

Penn State was two plays away from becoming the No. 1 team in the country. Fifteen days later, James Franklin was fired for performance, the stunning conclusion to one of the most sudden implosions the sport has ever seen.

During that span, the Nittany Lions lost three times:

– First, in double overtime, to a very talented squad that hopes to contend for a national championship. (Oregon)
– Then, inexplicably, to a previously winless opponent that looked like it might be the worst power-conference team in the country. (UCLA)
– And, finally, to a program that has spent most of its history as one of the doormats of the Big Ten conference. (Northwestern)

That very specific sequence of events is what prompted Franklin’s ouster in the midst of his 12th season. It was not just that there was another brutal loss in a big game, but that it was then followed by two straight losses as a 20-plus-point favorite. The three-week freefall in the middle of a season that began with national championship aspirations made it impossible for Penn State to move forward with Franklin on the sidelines — no matter the cost.

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As is often the case with college football coaches, the bad losses are more memorable than the big wins. And so the 45 losses will overshadow the 104 wins, and so much of the good that he did over his decade-plus at the helm. Franklin leaves State College with a putrid 1-15 record against teams in the top five of the AP poll and a 4-21 record against top-10 opponents. But for all of the trials and tribulations of Big Game James, it was the littler games that eventually spelled his demise. Those were the games he’d almost always won.

Penn State’s decision to fire Franklin is, undoubtedly, a costly one. The school is expected to spend $45 million to buy out Franklin’s contract, which was set to run through 2031 after he signed a 10-year extension back in 2021 worth up to $85 million. This was right around the time that Lincoln Riley signed a 10-year contract with USC that pays him about $10 million per year. And Brian Kelly signed a 10-year, $95 million deal with LSU.

This was the peak of gluttony; for years in the late 2010s and into the 2020s, agents regularly fleeced athletic directors with preposterous long-term deals with outrageous amounts of guaranteed money. It led to, just two years later, Texas A&M paying the biggest buyout in the history of the sport ($76 million) to get rid of Jimbo Fisher.

On Sunday, Penn State became the school willing to pay the second-biggest buyout in college football history. It is unclear what the payment structure of the buyout will be, as all details of the extension have not been made public. But even if it is paid out over a period of years, that’s still a hefty price tag.

It is also the cost of doing business at this level. Schools believe they can’t afford for their football teams not to be good. They believe they have to spend whatever money it takes to be competitive in football, college sports’ biggest money-maker.

Five years ago, when sports shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic and everyone on every college campus was panicking about revenue generation and expenditures, my colleague Chris Vannini and I spoke to several athletic directors and even some coaching agents who hoped that the financial crisis would lead to a recalibration of coaching contracts — and schools’ willingness to pay massive buyouts. Some theorized that contracts could be structured smarter from the schools’ perspective, with smaller base pay and incentives to ensure that big payments came with actual on-field success. Or, perhaps in the transfer portal era, coaches could simply have shorter contracts; long-term deals have long been used for recruiting, to show that the head coach would be there for the duration of a recruit’s time on campus. That’s not necessary in an era of player transience.

But those ideas turned out to be far too Pollyannaish. One dissenting voice in the piece from April 2020 was the one who hit the nail on the head. An athletic director said that the pandemic shutdown highlighted even more just how important a successful football team is to an athletic department, which then could mean spending on football in any way (including excessively) would seem justified. The investment would be worth it because it’s the engine that makes the entire athletic department go.

“The importance of the sport and the importance of being successful at it are likely to only increase coming out of this,” the athletic director said. “You’ve understood it, but this is making it practical in a way that really brings it home.”

I think about that observation often. Fisher’s buyout came three years later, and now Franklin’s, too. It’s possible we’ll see more buyouts of $20 million or more paid out this year, too.

Who is the best team in college football?

The Big Ten College Countdown crew debates who the best team in the country is as the results keep getting more wild every week.

Athletic directors will cry poor when it comes to sharing revenue with their own athletes; they can pay athletes up to $20.5 million per year, a new line item that has caused athletic departments to eliminate staffers — and threaten to cut sports. Athletic directors will cry poor when it comes to sponsoring a wide variety of women’s and Olympic sports. Athletic directors will take meetings with private equity firms, claiming to explore any and all avenues for new revenue generation. Athletic directors will put logos on fields and (soon) on uniforms to bring in extra cash, too.

But they will continue to pay college football coaches tens of millions of dollars not to coach. They will spend whatever dollar figure is necessary to avoid being a failure in football, the most important sport on campus.

That is the lesson to take from Penn State’s decision, which was both stunning and not-at-all shocking at the same time: Schools are more afraid of losing football games than they are of losing money.