{"id":317178,"date":"2025-10-19T23:40:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T23:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/317178\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T23:40:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T23:40:14","slug":"for-virginia-tech-the-move-is-simple-go-all-in-for-james-franklin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/317178\/","title":{"rendered":"For Virginia Tech, the move is simple: Go all in for James Franklin"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Franklin made one thing abundantly clear during his appearance on ESPN\u2019s \u201cCollege GameDay\u201d<\/a> on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

The former Penn State coach \u2014 whose Oct. 12 firing sent shockwaves through college football<\/a> \u2014 very much wants to coach again. And if his first public comments since everything unfolded in State College are any indication, Franklin wants back in sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we were gonna win a national championship (at Penn State),\u201d he said. \u201cWe were close. That goal hasn\u2019t changed. We\u2019re just gonna go win a national championship somewhere else now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Your move, Virginia Tech.<\/p>\n

The Hokies are in the market for a new coach after they fired Brent Pry<\/a> last month, and if athletic director Whit Babcock has any intention of taking this coaching search seriously, he\u2019ll do whatever it takes to make a run at Franklin \u2014 the bar-none best candidate to take the Hokies back to the glory days they enjoyed under Frank Beamer.<\/p>\n

For starters, Franklin is a builder.<\/p>\n

When he took over Vanderbilt in 2011, the Commodores were coming off consecutive 2-10 seasons and had finished with just one winning season in the previous 29 years.<\/p>\n

Franklin went 6-7 in his debut season with an appearance in the Liberty Bowl, then won nine games in both 2012 and 2013, marking the best two-year stretch in program history.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n James Franklin won 18 games in his final two seasons at Vanderbilt. (Frederick Breedon \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Penn State quickly poached him after his third season at Vanderbilt when Bill O\u2019Brien \u2014 who steadied the program in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal \u2014 left the Nittany Lions for the head coaching job with the Houston Texans. Franklin had six 10-plus-win seasons and was one game away from competing in the national championship last season. His team this year, ranked No. 2 in the preseason, started 3-0 before consecutive losses to Oregon, UCLA and Northwestern \u2014 the latter two as favorites of 20-plus points \u2014 capped off one of the most stunning falls<\/a> in modern college football history and led to his ousting last week.<\/p>\n

The biggest knock on Franklin was that he could never win the big one<\/a> \u2014 he was 4-21 against top-10 teams \u2014 but Virginia Tech plays in the ACC, where Franklin\u2019s schedule wouldn\u2019t be near the gauntlet he faced in the Big Ten. With just four ACC teams in the AP Top 25<\/a> (compared to 10 from the Big Ten and five from the SEC), the ACC is wide open and Franklin could do what he does best \u2014 start laying a strong foundation \u2014 with considerably less pressure than what he experienced in State College.<\/p>\n

Gone are the days of Florida State and Clemson dominating the league, with programs like Virginia and Georgia Tech now having a real shot at the College Football Playoff via the ACC Championship Game. There\u2019s no reason why Virginia Tech couldn\u2019t return to that conversation with the right coach.<\/p>\n

And have you seen the way Franklin recruits the state of Virginia? The Hampton Roads area, which includes Norfolk, Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Suffolk and Portsmouth, is one of the most fertile recruiting spots on the East Coast and has produced some of the program\u2019s greats \u2014 most notably Newport News native Michael Vick.<\/p>\n

But since Beamer left, Justin Fuente and Pry failed to recruit the area well. In Fuente\u2019s case, it might have been a lack of interest. He seemed to care more about recruits in Texas. In Pry\u2019s case? He kept having to compete with \u2026 Franklin. Penn State has eight players from Virginia on its roster, including Norfolk native and star running back Kaytron Allen. In the 2023 recruiting class, Penn State signed six of the top 10 players in Virginia in the 247Sports Composite, including Nos. 1 and 2 in offensive lineman Alex Birchmeier and linebacker Tony Rojas. Virginia Tech and Virginia each signed none.<\/p>\n

Last but certainly not least, Virginia Tech announced in September that during a special meeting, the Board of Visitors approved a plan to add $229 million to the school\u2019s athletic department budget over the next four years so that Virginia Tech can compete with the best in the ACC and stay relevant nationally as the Big Ten and SEC continue to lap other conferences in revenue.<\/p>\n

Franklin has a history of asking for more \u2014 more money, more resources, more support to field the best team. To the extent that they can, the Hokies now appear to be eager to give their next head football coach everything possible.<\/p>\n

The caveat to all of this is that Franklin may not want the Virginia Tech job. He may see the Hokies as beneath him, and this year\u2019s coaching carousel will create plenty of opportunities. It wouldn\u2019t be surprising if he wanted to hold out for Florida, which fired Billy Napier on Sunday<\/a>, UCLA (which ironically was the penultimate nail in his coffin) or another job in the Big Ten or SEC, such as Wisconsin or Auburn, if those schools part ways with their coaches. It\u2019s not exactly a secret that the Power 2 run college football.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the possibility that Franklin\u2019s loyalty to Pry \u2014 his former defensive coordinator \u2014 would be too much for the Hokies to overcome. Pry and Franklin go back to their Vanderbilt days, where Pry was Franklin\u2019s co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach, before he followed him to Penn State, too. They spent 11 seasons together.<\/p>\n

But Virginia Tech, if it hasn\u2019t already, has to pick up the phone and call Franklin\u2019s super agent, Jimmy Sexton, to gauge his interest. Make him say no. Make him force you to open up the search only when he turns you down. He\u2019s too good a fit not to take seriously.<\/p>\n

We already know the man is itching to get back into coaching. And those stunning Blacksburg mountains would be a lovely change of scenery for his family \u2014 even if he doesn\u2019t care about fun outside of football.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know anything else,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for 30 years. I don\u2019t have hobbies. I don\u2019t golf, I don\u2019t fish. This has been such a big part of my identity, such a big part of my family. We love it. So I think (my initial reaction) was, take a deep breath, kind of in shock, surreal for a moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then it\u2019s, \u2018Hey, we\u2019ve gotta get back to doing what we do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Franklin made one thing abundantly clear during his appearance on ESPN\u2019s \u201cCollege GameDay\u201d on Saturday morning. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":317179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1428,1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68,35605],"class_list":{"0":"post-317178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-virginia-tech-hokies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115403477773950162","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}