<p>Top reasons for coach to stay at Vandy.<br>
* Vanderbilt is a higher ranked football program, top 25 two yrs now
* Vanderbilt is in the SEC, a better conference than PSU
* Nashville
* Happy Valley is a college town in a corn field 2 hours from a city
* Weather
* At PSU he will be affiliated with their scandal (I know it's not fair but it is what it is)
* The southeast is better for recruiting
* At PSU he will always be under JoPA's shadow
* Scholarship limitations at PSU
* At Vanderbilt he can create an elite program and become a legend. AT PSU he will inherit a disgraced program.
* At Vanderbilt he is affiliated with one of the world greatest universities.
* VU believed in him a offered him a head coach opportunity
* Two bad years at VU and he will still be loved. Two bad years at PSU and he is done.
* Free golf lessons from Brett Schnedecker</p>
<p>James Franklin has done an amazing job at Vanderbilt. I can see why Vandy supporters want him to stay.</p>
<p>Bud’s list a good one, but arguing in favor of going to Penn State are the following:</p>
<ol>
<li> Penn State is naturally in the top football tier of the Big Ten, along with Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska and perhaps now Michigan State and Wisconsin. You could argue that what Franklin has accomplished at Vandy is the ceiling. Whereas 9-4 is pretty much the floor at Penn State.</li>
<li>Big Ten is not the SEC, but it is a top 4 football conference. And the Big Ten is arguably a stronger academic conference overall than the SEC.</li>
<li>Franklin will not be affiliated with the scandal. He will be the anti-scandal. Except for some who will drag out his comments on assistant coaches’ wives and mistakes (imagined or real) made during the recent sexual assault scandal. The Sandusky scandal wipes out the shadow of Joe Paterno. The Bill O’Brien tenure further insulates Franklin from Paterno. In fact, I would argue that O’Brien casts more of a shadow now than Paterno.</li>
<li>The Southeast is better for recruiting, but Penn State can dominate recruiting over a wide range of Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey.</li>
<li> Scholarship limitations only apply for 2 more years, the end is practically here.</li>
<li> 106,000 crazy fans every home game.</li>
<li> Penn State is a Top 25 National public university. It is well respected in many, many areas.</li>
<li>It is closer to where he grew up. Extended family is closer.</li>
<li>Easier for kids to build snowmen in State College.</li>
<li> Free golf lessons from Arnold Palmer (2 hours away in Latrobe, PA).</li>
</ol>
<p>He’d make a lot more money at Vanderbilt ;)</p>
<p>I guess he might be going for money. According to sources Vandy offered him $4 mill, and Penn State is poised to give him $4.5. Makes him one of the top-paid coaches in the country. Penn State trustees are meeting tomorrow am, and they’ve called a press conference for 4:30 pm. I heard Vandy lost another 4 star recruit yesterday because of this. Bummer.</p>
<p>Yeah I just read that… shocked they offered him so much. Guess they wanted to outdo Vandy.</p>
<p>Kaukauna, I’ll give you Arnie (even though he’s a Wake Forest grad), 100,000 fans and even add Rolling Rock beer to the PSU job. In the big picture there may be 10-12 better college football jobs then the Vandy job and about 20 similar jobs. I would call PSU a lateral move.<br>
SJTH & Pancaked, I’m surprised PSU has any money left to pay a football coach. I guess the football culture, and it’s $$$$, has not changed at PSU.</p>
<p>Loved Willie Geist’s tweet a little while ago:</p>
<p>@JamesFranklinVU, here’s my final offer: lunch for life at Rotier’s & your own NBC sitcom called “Franklin, My Dear” (Thurs., 9/8c).</p>
<p>bud123 - I guess we disagree. I’d still put the PSU football job ahead of the Vandy football job, even now when PSU is still reeling from the Sandusky revelations. Also, PSU is not a poor school by any means. Among public universities, the endowment may be top 10 at around $2 B. They have an enormous, loyal, and prosperous body of alumni. So for them to pay $4.5 M for the coach is doable. They have no buyout of O’Brien weighing them down. I’m telling you they could do a fundraising campaign and endow that coaching position in a month.</p>
<p>Anyway, I think it is still up in the air that Franklin leaves. It will be a blow to Vanderbilt if he does leave. He has brought a lot of excitement and pride to the school, don’t you think?</p>
<p>I like the Parcells quote that you are what your record says you are. Franklin’s says he’s one of the top 20 head football coaches in the U.S.</p>
<p>Franklin has the status of a god on campus after what he’s done to the football program and school culture. It will be a huge blow if/when he leaves. We have t-shirts and signs with just his face on them.</p>
<p>May I whine a little… We had him at Maryland and we let him go!!! Now, he is going to be recruiting against us in the Big 10?? Please stay in the SEC! Maryland doesn’t need any more help in its death spiral.</p>
<p>He’s gone, probably with some colleagues. Now on to a good replacement hire, I hope.</p>
<p>I trust them to find the right guy. As much as I love Franklin, I do hope PSU fails to perform and misses what he left behind at Vandy! We have a strong football program and tradition now, with or without him.</p>
<p>James Franklin was incredibly overrated as a football coach. Clearly, accomplishing what he did at a school that is historically terrible at football is very impressive. He peaked, though. He’s not going to win a national championship at PSU… he just does not have that it factor. With that said, he was an absolute beast of a recruiter, and I hope that our next coach is just as good in that area. </p>
<p>I’m excited about our program’s future because I think we are now in a position to go out there and get a coach far better than Franklin. David Williams is a smart guy, and I trust that he won’t let this program slip back into nothingness, especially with the new multipurpose facility having just gone up! </p>
<p>I do think James Franklin loved this university. I do think James Franklin is a loyal human being. When he said that he intended to be here for the long haul… I have no doubt that he meant it. It might well be true that Penn State has always been his dream job, but early on he had no idea that there would be an opening there for a long time. He gave this program something to be proud of, he gave this program hope, and we should at least give him a decent level of respect. With that said, not mentioning Vanderbilt in his official statement was a classless move, but I’m comfortable attributing this to the heat of the moment and the need for him to show his support to Penn State. </p>
<p>Oh how I want to see Vanderbilt vs Penn State in the future.</p>
<p>We are…Vanderbilt! Anchor Down.</p>
<p>I’ve been searching around for anything that he has said to/about Vanderbilt… Cannot find anything… maybe it’s coming soon? Very odd.</p>
<p>He will never mean as much to PSU as he did to Vandy. He’s a great coach and I feel that Vandy was the place he had the opportunity to make the best of his style and personality. I always felt his greatest talents were building tradition and excitement-- PSU already has that. At best, he’ll probably just be a decent coach there. While his success here in recruiting and technical coaching was impressive, he did have a lot going for him-- the collapse of traditional SEC powerhouses, favorable scheduling, etc. </p>
<p>We’ve already seen several 4-star recruits drop their commitments to Vandy after Franklin leaving, which is so disappointing.</p>
<p>Let’s not forget:</p>
<p>“There are only three conferences that matter in football: the AFC, the NFC, and the SEC.” – James Franklin ;)</p>
<p>I watched his press conference at Penn State, and he did mention Vanderbilt quite a few times. He sort of pushed the idea that he liked Vanderbilt, that the people and players were family, but that Penn State has been his dream job for a long time. I don’t think he is being disingenuous and I believe him when he says that he does not want to coach in the NFL. He does seem like the type of guy that wants to have relationships with players. </p>
<p>You’re definitely right, though-- there is no way he will have the legacy at Penn State that he could have had here. Have some 4-star recruits actually dropped their commitments? I saw 2 or 3 this morning tweet that they had not re-opened… but James Franklin certainly serves as a reminder of taking promises with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>I do think a potentially strained relationship with the Chancellor helped him make his decision, though. It does seem that Zeppos really stopped preaching the name Franklin from the rooftops once the scandal occurred, and I’m sure that relationship was just as strained in private. I assumed all along that it came down to whether or not David Williams could get the Ingram family to back him up and give Franklin a raise. I guess the lure of his home, his dream job… not to mention his strained relationship with the Chancellor, made even that too little.</p>
<p>geez, PSU doesn’t need your hate, folks! they’ve had enough of that lately. and franklin doesn’t deserve it. love vandy and what it means for elite D1 sports to have vandy and stanford do well.</p>
<p>jkeil911,</p>
<p>I’m not sure where you’re seeing much hate. People have a write to be mad at him. He came in making HUGE promises and bailed. If it was aimed at me personally, I really don’t know what you mean. I thought he was overrated while he was here, and is overrated now at PSU. Again, he seems like a good guy. I wish him well, but I hope Vanderbilt blows expectations out of the water and makes him look foolish.</p>
<p>I’m glad he was here. He raised the program from the bottom and now it is respected. Hopefully Vandy can get another solid head coach and not settle for someone subpar. The only thing I hate right now is how nearly 1/2 of the commits decommitted (understandably…), and how A LOT of them are going to Penn State. Kind of a slap in the face.</p>
<p>I agree hobbithopeful - the de-commits going to PSU is some serious salt in the wound. And Carta-Samuels brother de-committed too. ugh.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>(from 2012)</p>
<p>Many of the decommits have said that Vandy remains their top choice but they want to see who the new coach is and just consider other offers. If they follow to PSU, that would be very painful.</p>