CFP – Can Penn State coach James Franklin win the big one?

There’s no sugarcoating it: As Penn State’s coach, James Franklin owns an abysmal 4-19 record against opponents ranked in the Associated Press top 10 — and is just 3-10 in such games when his team is also in the top 10.

It’s a mark that saw a small but significant boost with Penn State’s resounding 31-14 College Football Playoff quarterfinal win against No. 8-ranked Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl, but with each step forward in the CFP bracket comes a bigger opportunity — and louder doubters about Franklin’s ability to beat the best.

As the Big Ten runner-up and no. 6 seed in the College Football Playoff, the narrative around Penn State was that they arguably had the easiest path to the national title — a home game against overmatched No. 11 seed SMU, followed by a matchup against the Mountain West Conference champion and No. 3 seed Boise State. The Nittany Lions outscored their first two playoff opponents by a combined 69-24.

Now, Franklin is two wins away from the school’s first national championship since the 1986 season, but to win it, he needs to do something that has eluded him for most of his career: beat a top-5 team. He is 1-14 at Penn State against AP top-5 teams, with the only win coming in 2016 against No. 2 Ohio State. By comparison, former coach Nick Saban (24-11 at Alabama), former coach Urban Meyer (6-2 at Ohio State) and Georgia coach Kirby Smart (11-7) all have winning records against AP top-5 opponents, according to ESPN Research . However, Ohio State coach Ryan Day is 5-6 against them and former Penn State coach Joe Paterno was 3-12 in his first 15 games against AP top-5 teams at Penn State.

Franklin is also 0-5 against teams ranked in the top five by the CFP selection committee, losing those games by an average of 20.4 points, according to ESPN Research. The Nittany Lions will face Notre Dame (No. 3 AP/No. 5 CFP) on Thursday in a College Football Playoff semifinal at the Capital One Orange Bowl (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) in what is arguably Franklin’s biggest game. career.

Franklin “understands” fans’ frustration. He declined to comment for this story, but said this after a 20-13 loss to No. 4 Ohio State on Nov. 2: “No one looks in the mirror harder than I am. I’ve said this before, but 99% of programs across college football would die to do what we’ve been able to do in our time here.”

Despite its struggles against top teams, Franklin enters the Orange Bowl with a 101-41 record and is 64-33 in the Big Ten over the past decade in State College. That includes five top-10 finishes, a Big Ten title (2016) and regular appearances in the New Year’s Six Bowl game. Under Franklin, Penn State joins Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State as the only programs to rank in the selection committee’s final top 12 in at least seven of the past nine seasons.

He has six years left on his contract and the support of his administration.

“I’m not going to give credence to the criticism because I see it differently,” said Penn State athletic director Patrick Kraft, who was hired at Penn State on July 1, 2022, after serving two years as Boston College’s athletic director. “When I got here, I was really surprised at how bare the infrastructure was and how everything was set up, how far behind we really were. Yes, wins and losses are what we’re all judged on, but I’ll tell you, the culture of that building and the young men he brings in and graduates is second to none.

“You don’t look behind the curtain as a fan or just someone watching,” Kraft said, “and when you get behind the curtain, it’s culture and family that oozes out to me. That’s really how it’s built, but the infrastructure behind it didn’t match that culture, and we still have a ways to go, so yeah, we’re going to win every game — that’s the expectation of every program, but to see what he’s done and that consistency is that which is remarkable to me.”

As a former Big Ten head coach who spent seven seasons leading Indiana, first-year Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Allen has studied the Nittany Lions inside and out. He has planned the game against Franklin and now he is trying to help Franklin win its first national title. Allen heard Franklin’s critics when he was at Indiana, and he has heard them again as a member of Franklin’s staff.

“Now that I’m here and I look behind the scenes and the day-to-day and see how much of a bulldog he is – that’s the word I use – he’s a bulldog for the details and the little things and just being on top of ​​everything,” Allen said. “To me, that criticism isn’t fair, but until you win the big games, they’re going to be there. And I think all of us as coaches understand that.”

What Franklin has accomplished so far is often overshadowed by what he hasn’t. According to ESPN Research, when Franklin won his 100th game at Penn State in the first round against SMU, he became the fourth FBS coach to win 100 games at a single school since joining State College in 2014. The career milestone set him in elite company, joining Dabo Swinney at Clemson (129 since 2014), Nick Saban at Alabama (127 from 2014-23) and Kirby Smart in Georgia (105 since 2016).

However, there is one thing that separates Franklin from the rest of the pack – multiple national titles.

“We’re not running away from the expectation,” Kraft said. “As the head coach of Penn State, there’s so much scrutiny on him and he handles it really well internally. He and I are partners in this.”

One current Big Ten head coach said Franklin’s expectations should reflect the resources he has to work with.

“Ryan Day has been to championships, Clemson has been to championships, Bama has won them, Michigan has won them,” he said. “If the Penn State expectation is that they should have at least played for championships in 10 years of his tenure, then no, he’s not successful, right? If their expectation is, ‘Hey, we’re only going to resource him to be a 10-win team, January 1 bowl team, right at the bottom of the blue blood from a resource standpoint — which I don’t know — so yeah, he matches the expectations of a 10-win guy If you’re a blue blood, you’ve become resources like Clemson, like Michigan, like Ohio State, like the people we’re comparing them to, because it’s not fair to have that expectation if he didn’t have the resources.”

Kraft said so much of Penn State’s growth under Franklin has come behind the scenes with things like working to build the budget for the NIL, salaries for assistant coaches, stadium renovations and improvements for Penn State’s student-athletes in all sports in areas such as mental health , nutrition and travel — all things that ultimately contribute to winning a national title, but happen off the field.

“You have to build the infrastructure in-house,” Kraft said. “That’s what I think has really improved is giving him — and all of our sports — the opportunity to go and do the things they need to do internally to get up to the championship level.”

Another Big Ten head coach said the most notable improvements with Penn State and Franklin this year are twofold: the hiring of two proven coordinators in Allen and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, and Franklin’s overall growth as a head coach in certain situations.

“James, in my opinion, has surrounded himself with perhaps the best coordinator combination in our league,” the source said. “Now James has been able to control games and do the things he’s good at for the first time. He’s on another level as a head coach.

“I get it, I get the narrative,” the coach said, “but it’s probably based more on the past than the present. Even he has a better understanding of how to use your players. He’s been at Penn State so long, he’s always been the favorite, so when he comes into these games where he’s the underdog, you have to not only play differently, you have to strategize differently. And when he ran that fake punt against Minnesota.. .I don’t think he ever had to before and he’s kind of aware that’s what I have to do to win this game a learning curve for it.”

Kotelnicki said Franklin doesn’t get enough credit for being as consistently good as he has. From 2016 to 2019, Franklin led Penn State to 42 wins, the most in program history for the Big Ten era, and a school record 28 conference wins.

“It’s really hard to win, and to do it over a decade like he’s done as a football coach here, it’s really hard,” Kotelnicki said in the Nittany Lions’ locker room after their win against Boise State. “I’ve had the opportunity in my life to work with some pretty good head coaches. He’s definitely in the elite company. So I don’t know if (beating Boise State) is going to silence the critics — probably not. . . . But I hope it calms down a bit for his sake.

Penn State’s defense was more than OK in the Fiesta Bowl win against Boise State, and it will need to play at a championship level for Franklin to improve its record and advance against the Irish. According to ESPN Research, defense is at the heart of Penn State’s problem in past top-10 matchups. The Nittany Lions have allowed 31 points per game. game in those matchups and 422 total yards. The defense has also allowed 190 rushing yards per game under Franklin in top-10 matchups.

Against Boise State and Ashton Jeanty, the Heisman runner-up was held to a season-low 104 rushing yards. That trend will have to continue: Notre Dame has relied on its running game this season, ranking in the top five in yards per carry. rush and rushing touchdowns.

Penn State will play its third AP top-5 matchup of the season, dropping the previous two games against Ohio State and Oregon. The program’s problems also run deeper than Franklin: The Nittany Lions haven’t won a top-five matchup since 1999 against No. 4 Arizona.

“You just have to do a good job of blocking it, but also not be afraid to dig and find ways to make change,” Allen said. “That’s what I see him doing is, ‘Hey, what can we do?’ and there’s this constant evaluation of how we practice if something doesn’t go a certain way. I just see him being so relentless in it as a leader of our program, so for me, I think it’s just a matter of time.”