James Franklin wasn’t out of a job for long.
The former Penn State football coach is finalizing a deal to be named Virginia Tech’s next head coach and things between the two sides are expected to be completed in the near future, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel.
Franklin is replacing Brent Pry in Blacksburg after he was fired by Virginia Tech in September following a 0-3 start to the season.
Pry had served under Franklin as defensive coordinator at Vanderbilt and Penn State before being hired by Virginia Tech in 2022, before being ousted from the job three years later.
The Franklin hire ends a little over a month of unemployment for the football coach, who was fired by Penn State after the wheels of a once-promising season started to come off when the Nittany Lions dropped three straight games beginning at the end of September.
Franklin went 128-60 over 15 seasons as head coach at Vanderbilt and Penn State and helped lead the Nittany Lions to the College Football Playoff semifinals last year.
The head coach has made a career of helping to pull football programs out of the mud, both at Vanderbilt and then at Penn State, rejuvenating the program from the massive NCAA sanctions that stemmed from the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
Weeks after his Penn State ouster James Franklin has landed at Virginia Tech. AP
Now, Franklin takes the helm of a football program that is looking for a boost after it’s struggled to find a true successor to Frank Beamer, who coached at the school for 29 seasons before retiring in 2015.
Since then, Justin Fuente and Pry have coached at the school to little success.
The Hokies have not won double-digit games in a season since Fuente’s first year in 2016.
During Franklin’s first interview following the split from Penn State, he told ESPN’s “College GameDay” that he thought “we were gonna win a national championship there.”
“We were close. That goal hasn’t changed. We’re just gonna go win a national championship somewhere else now,” he said.