{"id":297972,"date":"2025-11-17T23:30:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/297972\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T23:30:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:30:10","slug":"james-franklin-taking-virginia-tech-job-after-49-million-penn-state-firing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/297972\/","title":{"rendered":"James Franklin taking Virginia Tech job after $49 million Penn State firing"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Franklin wasn\u2019t out of a job for long.<\/p>\n

The former Penn State football coach is finalizing a deal to be named Virginia Tech\u2019s next head coach and things between the two sides are expected to be completed in the near future<\/p>\n

\u201cVirginia Tech has attracted and hired an incredible head coach and extraordinary recruiter in James Franklin. The Board of Visitors enthusiastically supports this hire,\u201d Rector of the Board of Visitors John Rocovich said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cWe signal to Hokie Nation, and the entire nation, the shared importance of athletic support and success.\u201d<\/p>\n

He will be officially introduced as the new coach on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m honored and humbled to join the Hokie family,\u201d Franklin said in the Virginia Tech statement. \u201cMy vision is simple: to restore unmatched excellence, to build something that lasts, and to serve this University, the Commonwealth of Virginia and our amazing fan base with honor, integrity, and passion. I look forward to getting to work with our players, our staff, and the entire Virginia Tech community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Franklin is replacing Brent Pry in Blacksburg after he was fired by Virginia Tech in September following a 0-3 start to the season.<\/p>\n

\"PennWeeks after his Penn State ouster James Franklin has landed at Virginia Tech. AP<\/p>\n

Pry had served under Franklin as defensive coordinator at Vanderbilt and Penn State before being hired by Virginia Tech in 2022, before being ousted from the job three years later.<\/p>\n

The Franklin hire ends a little over a month of unemployment for the football coach, who was fired by Penn State after the wheels of a once-promising season started to come off when the Nittany Lions dropped three straight games beginning at the end of September.<\/p>\n

Franklin went 128-60 over 15 seasons as head coach at Vanderbilt and Penn State and helped lead the Nittany Lions to the College Football Playoff semifinals last year.<\/p>\n

The school negotiated Franklin\u2019s buyout from $49 million down to $9 million, according to multiple reports.<\/p>\n

The head coach has made a career of helping to pull football programs out of the mud, both at Vanderbilt and then at Penn State, rejuvenating the program from the massive NCAA sanctions that stemmed from the Jerry Sandusky scandal.<\/p>\n

Now, Franklin takes the helm of a football program that is looking for a boost after it\u2019s struggled to find a true successor to Frank Beamer, who coached at the school for 29 seasons before retiring in 2015.<\/p>\n

Since then, Justin Fuente and Pry have coached at the school to little success.<\/p>\n

The Hokies have not won double-digit games in a season since Fuente\u2019s first year in 2016.<\/p>\n

During Franklin\u2019s first interview following the split from Penn State, he told ESPN\u2019s \u201cCollege GameDay\u201d that he thought \u201cwe were gonna win a national championship there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were close. That goal hasn\u2019t changed. We\u2019re just gonna go win a national championship somewhere else now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Franklin wasn\u2019t out of a job for long. The former Penn State football coach is finalizing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1607,399,17021,398,396,397,99,1772],"class_list":["post-297972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-james-franklin","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports","tag-virginia-tech-hokies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}