News Article: How Penn State unraveled

[Cruloc]

'It all turned so bad so fast': Inside James Franklin's Penn State departure

Penn State entered the season with national title aspirations. Six games in, the school fired its coach.

www.espn.com

Sounds like what we assumed. They were wound so tight and then everyone could see in the Oregon game that Lanning was coaching circles around Franklin with in game calls.

That one decision where Franklin punted from the Oregon 36, had a touchback......probably let the whole team know they were done.

 

[PA Tide Fan]

I think there were two problems that Penn State had under Franklin. The first one (in game calls) was mentioned in the article. He always seemed to choke in the big games with those in game calls that left PSU fans scratching their heads. The second was recruiting. He could never get as many good players as Ohio State and Michigan did. Before the west coast teams joined the Big Ten Penn State was consistently only 3rd best in the conference. I only remember Franklin having two Top 10 recruiting classes. Most of the time they were around 14th or 15th which isn't quite good enough to build a championship team.