Just three weeks ago, Penn State was on top of the football world. The Nittany Lions were the No. 3 team in the country and hosting No. 6 Oregon for a “white out” game with ESPN’s College Gameday in town.
But things quickly went down hill from there. After a disastrous three weeks, Penn State fired head coach James Franklin Sunday afternoon.
Penn State lost to Oregon in overtime the last weekend in September but the real trouble started last week when UCLA upset the Nittany Lions in one of the biggest upsets of the season if not recent history. UCLA and quarterback Nico Iamaleava were 0-4 entering the game before pulling off the 42-37 shocker in Westwood.
Franklin’s seat was already extremely hot entering Saturday when Penn State suffered another humiliating loss, this time at home. Northwestern stunned the Nittany Lions, 22-21, as Penn State fell to 3-3 (0-3 SEC) on the season.
The veteran head coach already had a reputation for being unable to win the big one and the Oregon game seemed to further prove that narrative. But Penn State had been fantastic at beating teams they were better than under Franklin. When they couldn’t do that the last two weeks, Penn State decided to make a move.
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Franklin was in his 12th-year as Penn State’s head coach and finishes his tenure with a 104-45 (65-37 Big 10) record. Penn State won a Big 10 Championship in 2016, a Fiesta Bowl in 2017 and the Rose Bowl in 2022 but were unable to have the top-end success that Michigan and particularly Ohio State has had in recent years.
Penn State owes Franklin $49 million as his buyout— marking the second biggest in the history of the sport behind only Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M.
Tennessee has a past with Franklin. For one, Franklin was the head coach at Vanderbilt for three years before taking the Penn State job. He was also a candidate to become Tennessee’s head coach back in 2021 when the Vols ended up hiring Josh Heupel.
Franklin could end up back in the SEC with the Arkansas job already open and both the Auburn and Florida jobs potentially becoming open by the end of the year.
