Penn State’s Franklin, Ohio State’s Day criticize Big Ten for lack of communication
At this point, Penn State head coach James Franklin sounds like a broken record. And so do other prominent figures in the Big Ten.
Franklin made an appearance on ESPN Radio’s “Keyshawn, JWill & Zubin” Thursday morning — nearly a month after the Big Ten postponed its fall sports season — to air his grievances regarding the lack of transparency from conference leadership on a plan to start the football season.
“We just haven’t gotten great communication from the beginning,” Franklin said. “We never really have fully been told or understood why the season was shut down in the first place. And then there hasn’t been a whole lot of communication since. When I say communication, we’ve had meetings, but I’m talking about kind of really understanding why and what and how we got here.”
Since the Big Ten’s Aug. 11 postponement announcement, frustration has mounted among the conference’s head coaches and players. There’s been little explanation — aside from an open letter published Aug. 19 — from Commissioner Kevin Warren about the process that canceled fall football for the conference or a plan moving forward.
Ohio State head coach Ryan Day also spoke out Thursday, releasing a statement on Twitter hours after Franklin’s radio appearance.
“While I understand the Big Ten Conference’s decision to postpone the football season because of health and safety considerations, the communication of information from the Big Ten following the decision has been disappointing and often unclear,” the statement read. “However, we still have an opportunity to give our young men what they have worked so hard for: a chance to safely compete for a national championship this fall.”
This push comes after Big Ten programs Wisconsin, Maryland and Iowa all paused football workouts in the last week because of spikes in coronavirus cases within the programs.
On Wednesday, Penn State revealed it had also stopped team activities for “several programs” following 48 new positive COVID-19 cases. Though the athletic department didn’t disclose which teams had halted operations, Franklin said Thursday that his group wasn’t among the teams forced to stop practicing.
“Fortunately, based on our guys’ discipline and based on our guys’ decision-making … we’ve been in a pretty good place,” he said. “So that’s not us — that’s not our program.”
Franklin and Day both highlighted the dissatisfaction of being unable to provide answers about a path forward to their players and their players’ parents. They also mentioned how it’s been difficult to watch teams from other conferences play games.
“These young men and their parents have asked so many questions that I do not have the answer to,” Day wrote, “but one that hurts the most is, ‘Why can these other teams and players play and we can’t?’ Duke is playing Notre Dame, and Clemson is playing Wake Forest this weekend. Our players want to know: why can’t they play?”
Even though he feels strongly that it is “behaviors away from football” causing the spread of the coronavirus and not games or practices, Franklin doesn’t have any idea when Big Ten teams will compete again.
He has no clue what the next step in that process is, either.
“In terms of where we’re at, I’m not really sure,” Franklin said. “I think that’s part of the problem.”
This story was originally published September 11, 2020 at 8:00 AM.
