Sports
James Franklin suggests he stayed at Penn State too long
Here’s a new twist in the saga surrounding James Franklin’s 2025 Penn State shootout. Afterwards, Franklin says he stayed with the Nittany Lions too long because he didn’t get a chance to stay longer.
In a new long-form article published by The Athletic, Franklin discussed again his resignation in 2025 and his quick pivot to looking for a new job. That brought him to Virginia Tech, where Franklin said he plans to apply the lessons he learned in nearly a dozen years at Penn State.
However, Franklin suggested that, in retrospect, he may have stayed at Penn State too long. When asked by The Athletic’s Ralph Russo if he regrets not leaving “on his own terms,” Franklin replied, “Yes.”
“I say that because of the way it ended,” Franklin said told The Athletic. “I didn’t feel that way at the time because when all these opportunities came up, I turned them down because we were so close.”
That comment, part of a much longer story about how Franklin plans to approach his job at Virginia Tech, underscored the tension Franklin had with Penn State for years that finally erupted last October.
Franklin and his representation had multiple conversations with other programs while at Penn State, most of them especially at USC in 2021. Franklin was also mentioned as a potential candidate for the LSU job that year.
Franklin used those flirtations to… 10-year contract with Penn State, which would guarantee him $85 million over his lifetime. Penn State and Franklin eventually negotiated onesignificantly lower redemption after his discharge.
In a series of interviews from the spring, Franklin has spoken about his firing as something that happened to him abruptly and unfairly. Franklin told Adam Breneman that he felt that hedeserved more “grace” of Penn State’s leadership after the team’s 0-3 start to the Big Ten schedule in 2025.
“If you give yourself a spot for 12 years, turn down a bunch of jobs and build it back up to a pretty consistent top-10 program competing for championships, you felt blindsided and you felt like you at least earned that, right? A conversation,” Franklin told Breneman in an interview.
Franklin echoed that idea to The Athletic’s Russo, calling his dismissal “headless.”
“Well, it’s unheard of because people have had challenges and had an opportunity to work through it,” Franklin told The Athletic. “What makes it what you’re describing is that we haven’t had a chance to fix it.”
Penn State Athletic Director Pat Kraft fired Franklin a day after the Nittany Lions game. 22-21 loss to Northwestern at Beaver Stadium. However, Kraft later said his decision didn’t just reflect Penn State’s three-game losing streak against Oregon, UCLA and Northwestern.
This isn’t just a three-game thing,” Kraft said in October. “This really digs into where we were as a program. What is the trajectory of this program? And you all know, and I’m not shy about admitting it, that I’m here to win the national championship. I believe our fans deserve that, and I wake up every day to achieve that goal.”
The Athletic article also highlights some unique differences between Penn State and Virginia Tech, specifically how Blacksburg viewed Franklin’s availability in the coaching market. Whit Babcock, the former athletic director at Virginia Tech, said he told Franklin he wants the school to build a statue of Franklin next to a statue of Frank Beamer at Lane Stadium.
“You want to be in a place where you are celebrated and not tolerated,” Babcock told The Athletic. “And he is celebrated here.”
James Franklin told me he is incredibly proud of the legacy he left at Penn State, rebuilding the program after its darkest chapter and making it nationally relevant again, even though they never took the final step of winning a national championship ⬇️⬇️@NextUpBreneman X… pic.twitter.com/wA3aDasQsj
— Adam Breneman (@AdamBreneman81) July 7, 2026
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