Five years ago, late in the game against Indiana, Penn State found itself in a situation where it was almost impossible for the coach to screw up.
With a 21-20 lead, the ball inside Indiana's 20-yard line and an opponent who had exhausted all of their timeouts, Penn State only needed to kneel three times in the final 1:47 to escape with the win.
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This was supposed to be a non-event.
Then, against all football logic, Penn State scored. Indiana tied the game and then prevailed with a two-point conversion in overtime, inflicting one of the most crushing defeats—and perhaps the most egregious coaching sin—of Franklin's tenure.
But that last part is up for debate. When it comes to Franklin's management of game situations, tactics and timing, picking just one sideline fiasco is like asking where to start at a Las Vegas buffet.
After a long courtship this fall, On Monday, Virginia Tech finally locked up Franklin to become the Hokies' next head coach..
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The appointment will be celebrated throughout the industry: For Virginia Tech, it is a chance to return core competency to a program that has had a difficult decade; for Franklin, an opportunity to revive his career after This season in Pennsylvania was a stunning failure.which leads to his unceremonious dismissal in October.
Perhaps this will be the perfect marriage.
But this is not as certain as Franklin's supporters would have you believe.
James Franklin had a 104-45 record as head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions. (Isaiah Vasquez/Getty Images)
(Isaiah Vasquez via Getty Images)
In a tough coaching market where Virginia Tech was, at best, fifth of the available positions, was this a no-brainer for the Hokie administration?
Based on the resume, it's hard to argue with that. There aren't many free agents who won 68 percent of their games in 15 seasons at Penn State and Vanderbilt and coached a team to the College Football Playoff semifinals just 10 1/2 months ago.
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There's no denying that Franklin knows how to build a good program. He made it both a blue blood and one of the sport's traditional underdogs.
But in a broader sense, the whole theme of this college football season has been that some of the things that mattered most in the past don't matter as much now. Some programs have adapted, others have struggled, and the end result is a compressed sport in which even teams that appear to be heading for the CFP find themselves in fourth-quarter contention almost every week.
And when parity reigns in college football, as it has this year, there has never been more attention to what happens on the sidelines in close games.
When the margins are so small, every fourth-down decision, every situational play call, every missed timeout can be the difference between victory and defeat.
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And Virginia Tech just hired a head coach whose track record suggests he's one of the worst in the country at running the game.
Year after year this has been a major problem for Franklin. And it goes back to his very first Penn State game against UCF, when his bizarre refusal to use a timeout during a two-minute drill nearly cost the Nittany Lions an opportunity to kick the game-winning field goal.
From that point until his final game against Northwestern, Franklin took a defensive stance in one press conference after another, talking about his approach to the game, his decision-making and how he handled different situations.
The criticism and doubts were not unfair either.
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Franklin usually got important things right. But on the field, when the head coach has to make important tactical decisions in the heat of battle, he often behaved quite poorly and never got better.
The 4-21 record against top-10 opponents is no coincidence.
It ultimately cost him one of the best jobs in college football. Now he will have to do it in a program with fewer resources and natural advantages. Penn State has typically been the second or third most talented team in the Big Ten. It would take a ton of recruiting effort and zero effort to put Virginia Tech at this level of talent in the ACC.
And even if Franklin does that, at some point he will again be judged on whether he can win the games that matter most.
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If moving 370 miles south doesn't improve his ability to manage the clock or call plays under pressure, it won't be long before Virginia Tech fans begin to feel the frustration that Penn State has endured over the past decade.
