Just 15 days after being ranked No. 2 in the country, Penn State is looking for a football coach.
On Sunday, the school fired James Franklin after the Nittany Lions lost a third straight game. This week’s home loss to Northwestern came on the heels of a Oct. 4 loss to previously winless UCLA. This rut started with a double-OT loss to Oregon in a top-10 showdown. And that was that.
Despite Franklin’s 104-45 record in 12 seasons and a victory in last year’s College Football Playoff, Franklin was sent packing with a hefty $49 million buyout. He was long criticized for not winning big games (‘Big Game James’), and when he started losing the games you’re supposed to win by 20, it was over.
ESPN’s bombastic college football analyst Paul Finebaum agreed it was time.
‘It was the correct decision, but that doesn’t make it any less stupefying,’ Finebaum said on Monday’s ‘Get Up’. ‘… It’s still hard to wrap your arms around this fall from grace. I have never seen anything like this in nearly 50 years of covering college football. But he had nowhere to go. Losing to Oregon just proved that he can’t win big games, but we knew that going in. But these last two have been some of the worst coaching I have ever seen.
‘There was no faith in him. I talked to several people that were at the game Saturday and there were Penn State fans literally wearing bags over their heads. It’s one of the proudest programs in college football, so it was absolutely the right call, and there should be no turning back on that call at all.”
Names with Pennsylvania ties like Indiana’s Curt Cignetti and Nebraska’s Matt Rhule have been mentioned as possible replacements, though it won’t be easy (or inexpensive) to pry them away.
‘It’s been devalued, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be back because Penn State has one of the top 5 or 10 traditions in college football,’ Finebaum said. ‘So it’s capable.’