By Kyle Golik
For about a decade, “The Mouth From The South” Paul Finebaum always seemed to target former Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh’s failures as fodder to pile onto. Whether it was the big game losses, various on or off the field to field issues, or his poor record against Ohio State starting his career in Ann Arbor winless in his first five matchups allowed Finebaum to openly fire on Harbaugh.
With Harbaugh departing Michigan this past January to the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers, Finebaum needed another Big Ten to target.
I gave Finebaum some ammunition during Big Ten Media Days when I asked Franklin during the press conference where Penn State was in the stage of going from great to elite.
Finebaum criticized Franklin for not doing enough at Penn State with all the talent he has brought and the lack of big wins, conference championships, and even getting into the College Football Playoffs.
Penn State’s schedule looked promising at the beginning of 2024, West Virginia was supposed to vie for a Big XII Championship, Southern California was supposed to step up this year with Lincoln Riley finally dedicating resources to the defensive side of the ball – when you had the Week 1 win against LSU it only added to the euphoria. Illinois looked strong to provide competition, Wisconsin at Camp Randall was going to be difficult, and hopefully with some luck Ohio State would be obtainable.
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The slate could not have worked out better for Penn State in a lot of ways. They won their first seven games but when the Nittany Lions blew another opportunity to take down Ohio State, everything was under the microscope.
West Virginia is having a 21st-century version of the “Hatfields and McCoys” in a battle of the billboards in Morgantown whether to fire or keep the much-maligned Neal Brown.
Southern California has seemingly fallen apart since the Michigan game, now sitting at 4-5 with no wins in true road games this season.
Illinois has been Penn State’s lone quality win and they lost to an unranked Minnesota, who Penn State visits November 23rd in Minneapolis.
When Finebaum was asked to assess the impact for Ohio State with their win over Penn State, he began to discredit Penn State saying this is Ohio State, who has now won eight in a row against Penn State. A Penn State team under James Franklin whose records against elite competition is so poor you don’t even need me to regurgitate them once again.
Finebaum concluded the answer to the question, wasn’t surprised by the result, and generalized that the 111,000 at Beaver Stadium and 15 million people watching at home weren’t either. Then Finebaum labeled James Franklin as the “chokingest big time college football coach in recent college football history and his players have to suffer because of him,” and suggest that Penn State should fire him.
Should Penn State move on from James Franklin?
It’s easy to point to the Georgia situation and give credit for the Bulldogs upgrading from Mark Richt to Kirby Smart. It’s one of the few times that upgrade works.
You can look at programs like Nebraska, Tennessee, and Miami, who notably went years trying to upgrade from situations they thought were not acceptable and they continued to fail for years after thinking they could do better without Bo Pelini, Philip Fulmer (maybe it was time for Fulmer, but the line from him to Heupel is a bad one), and Larry Coker (Richt’s health derailed his time but Coker was ran out after one bad season and the time between him and Mario Cristobal goes to show it isn’t easy to upgrade).
I don’t think Penn State should fire Franklin without the certainty of having the right coach. Smart was coveted as he ascended to be Saban’s defensive coordinator. Virginia Tech nearly snared Smart, and Georgia realized it may have missed on a program changer if it didn’t act.
I feel we all can agree Penn State has currently peaked under Franklin, and it needs to figure out how to get to that next level. If Franklin is unable to, they will have to confront the notion of taking a chance on finding someone who can.
What I can say for certain, Franklin will be Finebaum’s favorite target since Harbaugh. Just expect the continuous grilling from the ESPN personality about him because it is a certainty that a James Franklin team cannot win a big game, the records just prove the point.
