Kevin Jones<\/a>. This is the superstar that we have a chance to get.\u201d<\/p>\nSo what went wrong at Penn State?<\/p>\n
The first thing Franklin points to when asked about lessons learned is staffing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs time went on there, you build it, and you lose really good people, right?\u201d Franklin said. \u201cYou lose Manny Diaz, you lose Joe Moorhead, you lose Ricky Rahne. Brent Pry.\u201d<\/p>\n
All four of those former coordinators left Penn State to become head coaches, including Pry at Virginia Tech.<\/p>\n
During Franklin\u2019s final two seasons at Penn State, he made two headline-grabbing and expensive hires, bringing offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki from Kansas after the 2023 season and luring defensive coordinator Jim Knowles from Ohio State after the Buckeyes won the national championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that I think that I had really done a pretty good job of at Vanderbilt and at Penn State was hiring complementary pieces. So we may never have been the best in the country on offense, or the best in the country on defense, or the best in the country on special teams, but we played really good complementary football,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cAnd early on at Vanderbilt, and early on at Penn State, I was heavily involved in the offense, and as time went on, and you\u2019re able to hire people with much more significant resumes, you get further and further away from it. And you\u2019re struggling with, I brought this person in to do a job, and you\u2019re going to let them do the job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franklin stresses this was not just a 2025 issue.<\/p>\n
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\n James Franklin was fired after Penn State lost three straight games by one possession to open Big Ten play. (Isaiah Vazquez \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cThat whole dynamic pushes you further and further away from the actual football, and to be honest with you, especially early on with NIL and the transfer portal, things have changed so much that in my mind, OK, those things made sense because I needed the right amount of attention on these other things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that was a dynamic now coming to Virginia Tech that I\u2019m never going to do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n
To that end, Franklin\u2019s Virginia Tech staff has a familiar feel to it, including the coach he replaced. Pry, who spent more than a decade with Franklin at Vanderbilt and Penn State, agreed to stay as defensive coordinator.<\/p>\n
Franklin knows exactly what he is getting with Pry, one of his closest friends.<\/p>\n
As for the offense, it was a nagging problem for Franklin for much of his time at Penn State. His first offensive coordinator at Virginia Tech is Ty Howle, 34, who spent the past six seasons at Penn State working his way up from offensive analyst to tight ends coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see the game very similar, and in my opinion, I can have a very different conversation with Ty Howle in what I want because he\u2019s been a coordinator before, but not at this level,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cSo I can say, Ty, this is what I want, very specific, A, B, C, D, and E, and are you comfortable doing these things, and us working together? This allows me to put my head on the pillow at night because it\u2019s going to be how I want it to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franklin said he has made other adjustments that you would have to be inside the machine to notice. Changes to the way the team practices he hopes will help the defense. He redid his org chart to create more efficient lines of communication in an expanding operation.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s even upgraded the location of parking designated for athletes and coaches adjacent to the Merryman Center training facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, smell and feel like a big-time program,\u201d Babcock said, repeating a version of a line Franklin likes to use. \u201cI don\u2019t know when the guy sleeps.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franklin was caught in a time loop at Penn State. He inherited a program from Bill O\u2019Brien still recovering from the Jerry Sandusky scandal and grappling with how to deal with the legacy of Penn State legend Joe Paterno. Statues are a sore subject at Penn State and nobody would have ever suggested building one for Franklin.<\/p>\n
He led Penn State to its last Big Ten title in Year 3 and made the Nittany Lions nationally relevant again. But over the next eight seasons, as good as things were, they never got better.<\/p>\n
There were opportunities for Franklin to leave on his own terms. Does he regret staying so long?<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he said, but that\u2019s easy to say in retrospect after getting fired with a .698 winning percentage at Penn State.<\/p>\n
\u201cI say that because of how it ended,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel like that at the time because when all these opportunities came I turned them down because we were so close.\u201d<\/p>\n
From a big-picture standpoint, the lesson of 2025 for Franklin is don\u2019t get comfortable. Don\u2019t ever think you have it figured out. Six double-digit-victory seasons in the last nine full years might suggest the culture is solid and the program is strong, but what last year taught Franklin \u2014 and what he wants to get across to the people he leads \u2014 is that what took more than a decade to build can fall apart in three weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if everybody in the building was working that way,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cI think some people probably thought, hey, we\u2019ve been here 12 years, we\u2019ve been really successful, and I don\u2019t know if everybody was working with the same edge.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s my job, right, to hold that standard.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n James Franklin is trying to replicate the long run of success of Virginia Tech under Bud Foster (left) and Frank Beamer (center). (Brian Bishop \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
Virginia Tech provides the opportunity to bask in smaller successes.<\/p>\n
Ten years removed from Beamer\u2019s retirement, Franklin follows\u00a0 the disappointing tenures of Justin Fuente, who parlayed a Memphis turnaround into being Beamer\u2019s successor, and Pry, a former graduate assistant under Foster who vibed with the fan base but finished 16-24.<\/p>\n
One thing is for sure: No one will stay on Virginia Tech officials to deliver on their promises to Franklin more than Franklin himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you watch James Franklin walk into a room, when you watch James Franklin speak, when you watch James Franklin coach, it is an unbelievable difference between our previous coaches,\u201d Pearson said.<\/p>\n
After finally striking a deal with Virginia Tech, Franklin requested to meet with Beamer, outgoing Virginia Tech president Tony Sands, outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin and incoming Gov. Abigail Spanberger. He also requested to be part of the search committee charged with finding Babcock\u2019s replacement, former Florida Atlantic AD Brian White.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a huge draw for me,\u201d White said of working with Franklin. \u201cThroughout the recruiting process, James was very active on the committee. We probably talked a dozen times-plus. Every time I talked to him I became more interested.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franklin can be relentlessly demanding of his bosses. That wore on many at Penn State but was appealing to Virginia Tech officials, thrilled to hand him the keys and let him lead the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always pressure, and he\u2019s always got to win, and one day, maybe here, hopefully, it\u2019s if you don\u2019t win the national championship, it\u2019s a disappointment,\u201d Babcock said. \u201cBut I think this will enable him to coach more freely, with less pressure, more aggressively, and maybe find that special spark. I know he had an immense amount of pressure on him up there on Ohio State, Michigan and winning the national championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is no Ohio State in the ACC. The entire conference seems to be in transition, with Clemson descending, Florida State flailing and North Carolina doing whatever it\u2019s doing with Bill Belichick. Miami is the lone ACC school that seems to have figured out the NIL\/transfer portal era.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you see is you see opportunities, right? And you see some unusual paths, right?\u201d Franklin said about getting to the top of the ACC. \u201cBut you kind of look at the conference as a whole and you say, \u2018OK, Duke won the ACC championship last year and had a phenomenal season, and (Diaz) did a great job, but that looks very different than maybe a lot of other conferences in terms of who won the championship.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hokies were once like Clemson before Clemson took off and owned the conference during most of the 2010s. Virginia Tech won the ACC four times during its first six seasons in the conference (2004-10) but has played in the title game just once in the last 14 years. And that was 10 years ago.<\/p>\n
A statue depicting Frank Beamer, left leg propped up on a long empty bronze bench, play sheet in hand and headphones wrapped around his neck, sits outside the Southwest corner of Lane Stadium. In Franklin, Virginia Tech believes it finally has a truly worthy successor to the program\u2019s patriarch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want you this to be your end and your last job,\u201d Foster said he told Franklin. \u201cAnd I want a statue on the other side of Frank Beamer, with you in that spot right there.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he\u2019s capable of doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
If nothing else, Hokie nation is confident it will be a lot better than where they have recently been. But Franklin has already made it clear that Virginia Tech has only just begun to chase his ultimate goal, something Beamer came close to.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Invest to Win campaign that this place made before I even took the job, that made me realize that this place wanted to compete,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cBut I will also say this: There\u2019s a difference between competing to be competitive in the ACC and trying to win a national championship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BLACKSBURG, Va. \u2014 James Franklin gets the curiosity about how his time at Penn State ended. How it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":752880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1607,399,398,396,397,5694,99,1772],"class_list":["post-752879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-penn-state-nittany-lions","tag-sports","tag-virginia-tech-hokies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752879","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=752879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-627515780-scaled.jpg\")
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