Happy Valley Insider - Tuesdays with Gorney: New book offers key insight into big-time coaches
Texas A&M fired Jimbo Fisher after 10 games last season.
pennstate.rivals.com
Did Maryland botch not choosing James Franklin?
- Thread starter Richie O
- Start date
pennstate.rivals.com
The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football’s Era of Chaos is the new book by Armen Keteyian and John Talty and it offers a tremendous amount of insight into today’s college football landscape.
In today’s Tuesdays With Gorney, Rivals national recruiting director Adam Gorney shares 10 takeaways from the book and offers insights on some of the book’s top storylines.
Following a 9-4 season in 2010, first-year Maryland athletics director Kevin Anderson fired Ralph Friedgen and it was written into then-assistant coach James Franklin’s contract that he was to become the head coach by 2012.
Anderson reportedly told Franklin to look for opportunities elsewhere. That’s what Franklin did and led Vanderbilt to back-to-back nine-win seasons before getting the Penn State job. The Commodores have not had a winning season since and prior to Franklin’s arrival had one winning season dating back to 1982.
Maryland opted instead for UConn’s Randy Edsall, who took the Huskies to an improbable Fiesta Bowl game, but who went 22-34 as the Terrapins’ coach before returning to UConn.
In today’s Tuesdays With Gorney, Rivals national recruiting director Adam Gorney shares 10 takeaways from the book and offers insights on some of the book’s top storylines.
Following a 9-4 season in 2010, first-year Maryland athletics director Kevin Anderson fired Ralph Friedgen and it was written into then-assistant coach James Franklin’s contract that he was to become the head coach by 2012.
Anderson reportedly told Franklin to look for opportunities elsewhere. That’s what Franklin did and led Vanderbilt to back-to-back nine-win seasons before getting the Penn State job. The Commodores have not had a winning season since and prior to Franklin’s arrival had one winning season dating back to 1982.
Maryland opted instead for UConn’s Randy Edsall, who took the Huskies to an improbable Fiesta Bowl game, but who went 22-34 as the Terrapins’ coach before returning to UConn.
PSU is a blue blood with excellent winning % and top 8 all time wins across the major programs. We have a huge alumni base, we pack 110K rabid fans in our stadium and superior facilities. We are the top traditional program in heavily recruited DC/MD/VA/Northeast. Why compare it to UMD job ? Do we really believe CJF would have same 10w season results at UMD? He keeps us competitive in BT as third best team. That was the lowest expectation..and we got it.
Don’t think anyone predicted identical results at Maryland. Just that Maryland’s program would have been much better off.
Interesting.
IMHO, it takes so much to BUILD a program. And while PSU was struggling in the post-scandal years, we still had 100K coming to games and getting TV ratings. MD does not and will not.
You've got to give a lot of credit to CJF for being a key member who built PSU up from the survival years under O'Brien to the bowl years of CJF. The next step, to being a legit natty contender, is much harder. I feel like the staff and team still have a little of that blue collar mentality and need to graduate to a white collar mentality. By that I mean a confident stagger where the stage against the UMs, tOSUs and USC's aren't too big.
I love talking to executives that started out on farms or from families of working class parents. They all have that inflection point. My son told me a few years ago that his boss quit in the middle of a huge project. He was called out of his cubicle to go to a meeting by the c-level boss two steps up from him. in the room was the entire c-suite of his software company. They started asking him questions about the project. He told me he had an out of body experience where he could hear himself talking and felt like "hey, I am doing this. I am the smartest one in the room on this subject. How did it happen that the entire company is listening to me on this important project". He walked out of the meeting a new person. What that accepted the responsibility and knew his worth. I think PSU needs to have that moment.
IMHO, it takes so much to BUILD a program. And while PSU was struggling in the post-scandal years, we still had 100K coming to games and getting TV ratings. MD does not and will not.
You've got to give a lot of credit to CJF for being a key member who built PSU up from the survival years under O'Brien to the bowl years of CJF. The next step, to being a legit natty contender, is much harder. I feel like the staff and team still have a little of that blue collar mentality and need to graduate to a white collar mentality. By that I mean a confident stagger where the stage against the UMs, tOSUs and USC's aren't too big.
I love talking to executives that started out on farms or from families of working class parents. They all have that inflection point. My son told me a few years ago that his boss quit in the middle of a huge project. He was called out of his cubicle to go to a meeting by the c-level boss two steps up from him. in the room was the entire c-suite of his software company. They started asking him questions about the project. He told me he had an out of body experience where he could hear himself talking and felt like "hey, I am doing this. I am the smartest one in the room on this subject. How did it happen that the entire company is listening to me on this important project". He walked out of the meeting a new person. What that accepted the responsibility and knew his worth. I think PSU needs to have that moment.
When he was at Vanderbilt he timed it well. Bama dominated then the rest were not very dominant and that is how he cobbled together 9 win seasons. Richt was at Georgia and he did not have them anywhere close to where Smart has taken them. I think Tennessee was a dumpster fire. He caught Florida post Meyer and without any of Meyer's recruits and with Will Muschamp at the helm. Kentucky was pre Stoops with Joker Philips. Ole Miss was decent with Houston Nutt then Hugh Freeze.
He did get a few nice wins like vs Georgia and Ole Miss. He beat Auburn in 2012 post Cam Newton and when they went 3-9. Overall the SEC depth was nothing that it is today.
Franklin is a good solid CEO. Below average game strategist and in-game coach.
I think Locksley and Franklin are absolutely equivalents in terms coaching abilities. Franklin just has superior recruiting tools. Locks has three straight bowls and 2 8W seasons in a row. That is pretty damn good and certainly best since prime Friedgen era 25 years ago.
There is no such thing as timing it well when it comes to being the coach at Vanderbilt. They have long been the doormat of the SEC.
What Franklin did there is magnificent. It wasn't done prior for 30 years and hasn't been accomplished in the decade plus since.
What is forgotten is this is pre-portal. JF didn't get to cut some dead weight and bring in fresh talent. He won with the existing talent and improved as his players arrived.
BIG TIME.
Happy Valley Insider - Tuesdays with Gorney: New book offers key insight into big-time coaches
Texas A&M fired Jimbo Fisher after 10 games last season.
The SEC was not the dominant conference it is today. Certainly not what the B10 is today. So he did a good job. He beat ACC schools on his schedule like Wake and middle of the pack SEC schools. I would not say amazing or miraculous. I should clarify he is an above average coach when looking at the full landscape of coaches out there across every program which includes the Vanderbilts of the world. When you narrow his competitive set to say top 25 programs and those coaches (which is fair because he gets top 15 talent) then I believe he is below average on game strategy and in game coaching.
Now he is facing much tougher competition and has much better players and we see he can't beat the best teams. I'm sure Penn State thought he was going to have a least a little more success versus Ohio State and Michigan during his tenure than he has.
The SEC has been dominant for 15-20 years. They were dominant while JF was at Vandy. Considering what they did before JF and after, it is very amazing. Consistent 8 and 9 wins for his run there and cellar dweller before and after. He didn't win a conference title, he didn't beat Bama, but those are monumental moments that would take longer to produce at Vandy than a 3 year run before being hired away by a more prominent program.
The Big 10 is generally more lopsided than the SEC. Our top matches their top, but our middle depth was generally weaker prior to Oregon and USC's arrival. Even their bottom is generally stronger than our bottom, but I liken that more to geography than anything.
JF isn't elite, but he's in that next tier. What 25 coaches are you more impressed with? Which ones of them were beating Saban, Smart, OSU, Harbaugh? Dabo isn't even winning in that elite tier anymore.
Can be and was are 2 different things.
I liken it to 2021 in the Big 10. Widely considered a strong year for the conference because Sparty won 10 games, Michigan, OSU, and Iowa as well. We were 7-5, which gave teams a quality win.
No different than '23, but the conference depth isn't hailed as much when it's us at 10-2.
Same thing with Vandy. They beat a couple teams nobody expects and the image of the conference is "they were down"? During this 15-20 year run of SEC dominance?
Nah. I don't believe that. It's the same reason Fitzgerald got the praise he got at Northwestern. It's a near impossible place to compete at. And he won some games there. He stayed too long though. He should have moved up the ladder and won somewhere else.
I still praise CJF for Vandy--what he did there was unheard of which is why he was my first pick for this job. Patty Fitz being my other top candidate. I wanted to see what they could do with a better budget. Fitz did stay too long which is disappointing because now we'll never know.
With all due respect, your 1st two sentences are totally insane. The rest is reasonable.
I will again stick with my premise and we can agree to disagree. He did a good and I will give you a very good job at Vandy. Not magnificent or amazing. Why? He didn't beat the top tier while beating weak middle/lower end of the pack teams. I guess I am a tough judge.
Look at the teams he beat. He got a win over Richt who basically was Franklin. A good solid win but we know Mark Richt who tended to get less out of more. He beat Chizik and Auburn when they went 3-9. I think that was 2012.
I won't go through his whole record there but let's take 2013. His last year there and the springboard season to get the Penn State job.
He beat....
Austin Peay
UMass
UAB
Georgia 8-5
Florida 4-8
Kentucky 2-10
Tennessee 5-7
Wake Forest 4-8
Houston in bowl
I mentioned The Georgia win and yes a very good win. They were 15th ranked at the time.
Florida was coached by Will Muschamp who replaced Meyer. He is not a good coach and Meyer had kind of left the cupboard bare.
Kentucky was Mark Stoops first year after they fired Joker Phillips. Not the Kentucky that Stoops got them to a few years later.
Tennessee was Butch Jones in his first year following the Jay Paterno...I mean Derek Dooley experiment.
Then you have Wake who finished 4-8 that year.
And he got the bowl win over Houston who lost 4 games that season prior to the bowl game.
So in his 4 conference wins he beat one team with a winning record. The other 3 were a combined 11-25.
What's my point? I don't think he did an incredible miraculous job. He did a very good job turning the program around and Penn State made a good choice to snatch him. However he clearly was beating some downtrodden SEC teams who were in some dark years. He absolutely benefitted from that. And to his credit he also beat teams that he should beat but a lesser coach could have lost to like UAB and UMass.
I was not clear. Teams he beat in the SEC were not very good at that time. Not all of them but a good percentage. In 2013 he beat Georgia. They finished 8-5. The other conference teams he beat that year finished a combined 11-25. Not the defiinition of dominant.
I hear you. He was able to build a resume beating the low hanging fruit of the conference and parlayed that into the PSU job.
Low hanging fruit that no one else at Vandy prior to him or since have been able to beat. Got it.
Using the same criteria that we seem to be using for assessing Vandy's record, who has he beat? No body with a heartbeat. He runs up the score early in the season against a bunch of lightweights, then the school cancels classes and we boat race them. Equating Locksley and Franklin is crazy. Franklin makes him look like a fool each and every time they play and it's not all about roster talent.
Franklin won 18 games at Vandy in his last 2 years. Vandy has only won 38 games SINCE leaving over 10+ seasons.
I'm not saying he was getting ready to win the conference, but Vandy wins about 3 games per year on average and JF left there winning 9. He beat teams that Vandy just doesn't beat.
Vandy is a turd program when it comes to football. Did you see when they beat Va Tech week 1? The crowd was 80 or 90% Hokie fans.
He was very good at Vandy on a relative basis because, you’re right, it’s a black hole. But the Peter Principle seems to have caught up to him.
I do agree that he’s WAY better than Locksley
Yep, lost to NU twice during that period whereupon Vandy mailed a letter terminating the series.
Fitz and Franklin are very similar in that were/are CEO type HCs who need to hire good co-ordinators (both having a mixed track record in that dept).
As opposed to what? Coaches who don't need to hire good coordinators to win? Are there any of those?
He is a better coach than the other guys Vandy has hired. Again he is a good coach but not elite by any means when it comes to facing competition of equal talent.
What he did at Vanderbilt is turnaround a doormat pogram. He did that by beating a lot of mediocre to poor programs. Yes, I hear you, he had the best run of any Vandy coach before or after. And I understand Vandy was one of those poor programs and he got them to 9 wins. Get all that. Thst is why we hired him, he got results. My point is just examine exactly what he accomplished. Programs that are now very good (Tennessee), good (Kentucky) or elite (Georgia) were not when he was in the league. And Florida went from elite to then bad by the time he arrived. He beat all these teams. Could another guy had done that? Yeah some could but probably most couldn't. But it is not like what he did could not had been done ever by anyone else.
I do wonder if the James Franklin from 2011 walked into the head job at Vandy in 2024 and then by 2025 or 2026 would he have them at 9 wins? I say no but an interesting hypothetical nonetheless.
I was talking about coaching acumen and abilities. If you switched Locksley and Franklin, do you really believe Franklin beats us as the coach of UMD? No way or perhaps once like Locks did in 2020
So essentially you believe a mannequin could show up and win 10 games a year at PSU?
I am going back to question - would UMD have been better off with Franklin and the answer is no. Locksley has won 3 straight bowls and 2 8W seasons. That is amazing given Terps are now in BT and losing history lately. Friedgen pulled off 10w a few times but in weak ACC. I said we got Franklin who is highly capable of keeping us 3rd best team in BT. I think both programs got coaches who brought respective programs to acceptable levels..no more.
Why couldn't Franklin get Maryland to 3rd best in Big 10? 2nd when Michigan didn't know the opponents signs.
Same mannequin had 4 losing seasons in 5 years as well in the early 2000s. The school doesn't just produce 9 and 10 win seasons all by having its name on the marquee.
Point is, both have had a mixed record (at best) when it comes to hiring coordinators and at times had to be pressured to make changes.
Plus, having a CEO-type HC is a disadvantage compared to a HC who can secure one side of the ball (where they only have to hire a good co-ordinator for the other side).
Coaches like Fitz and Franklin are effed if they make a mistake with regard to hires on both sides.
It would be interesting to look at the records in recent years to see if there are any trends related to "offensive" vs "defensive* vs "CEO" head coaches. There are a lot of factors beyond just that metric but I wonder if it would really show less success for a CEO head coach.
To the original post - Maryland identified certain traits/deficiencies in Franklin's coaching abilities they didn't like. They may not have picked a better replacement than him, but they appear to have been correct in their assessment of him.
Source? Or just your opinion?
That was back when people were "coach in waiting" or some title for about a decade. Didn't JF have that at Maryland?
The original post said Franklin was set to take over in 2012, and Maryland chose not to take him.
I was happy when Franklin was hired. After all these years I keep seeing a lot of the same baffling decisions on his part. There's no point rehashing them, people have their own opinions, but he strikes me as a small school coach at a big school. He is the proverbial Peter Principle coach, someone who is hired one level too high for their talents.
Which is why PSU is one of the most successful programs in college football during his tenure.
The question being raised is if Franklin has hit his ceiling, 10-2?
Not bad at all if that is where he has topped out. Will get us into the playoff and probably win a first round game maybe every 3 or 4 years. Unlikely to ever get to the final four. No NCs.
I would like to be better than this future outlook but this may very well be what we have with James. Hope he can do better but that is undetermined at this point.
The blocker to great is good enough..that is where we are, more than any blue blood program in the nation.
Pretty obvious after they hired Randy Edsall, and the following two years that it was a huge mistake to not hire Franklin.
Similar threads
Latest posts
-
-
-
Football Penn State freshman Dejuan Lane is the next man up at safety- Latest: Chickadee34