Penn State football notebook: James Franklin is learning new ways to approach an abnormal season
James Franklin is a creature of habit. That’s why Penn State’s seventh-year head coach spent last weekend watching college football, even though he admitted it was “hard” to do so with no certainty on when his team would take the field.
“I’m somewhat of an addict,” Franklin told reporters on a Zoom conference call Thursday afternoon. “So I just can’t stop turning it on and watching it.”
After the Big Ten announced Wednesday morning that it would play football this fall, with plans to start the season the weekend of Oct. 23-24, Franklin can stop torturing himself. Now, it’ll be a matter of him getting used to breaking away from his routine.
Until Thursday, Penn State — like other non-competing teams — was only allowed to practice 12 hours a week due to an NCAA rule. With a little over a month until the Big Ten football season begins, teams will have to adjust quickly to their normal weekly 20-hour training schedules.
“It’s just going to be very different — from a practice perspective, from a meeting perspective,” Franklin said. “Leading up to the season is just going to be very different. So I just think we just have to approach it that way. And if you try to keep forcing it back into the normal model, that’s not gonna work.”
Franklin added that his staff will have to incorporate tackling back into practices, too, well before the nine-game season kicks off in late October. Penn State will be able to start practicing in full pads on Sept. 30.
The way Nittany Lions players interact with each other, their coaches and other people on campus will also be anything but normal. While Penn State announced Sept. 9 that it had paused team activities for “several programs” because of a spike in coronavirus cases in the athletic department, Franklin shared late last week that his team wasn’t one of the programs impacted.
But he knows he’ll have to continue to push his players — and they’ll have to push each other — to make smart decisions in order to be able to play this fall.
“It’s going to be challenging,” Franklin said. “We’re going to have to continue to make great choices — not only as a football program but also away from the football program — in our behaviors as coaches and as student-athletes. But we’re up for the challenge and excited about the opportunity.”
WHO’S IN? WHO’S OUT?
After star linebacker Micah Parsons opted out of the college football season in August, a source told the Centre Daily Times last week that junior tight end Pat Freiermuth would also forgo the upcoming season.
But shortly after the Big Ten’s announcement Wednesday, Freiermuth joined Franklin in an appearance on the Big Ten Network, where he announced he’d suit up for the Nittany Lions after all.
Though there were no reports that other members of the Nittany Lions’ roster had considered opting out, the possibility hasn’t been ruled out, either.
“In a perfect world, I think you’d like to say, ‘Who’s in is in,’” Franklin said, when asked if he knew of other players on his roster that would pass up playing this season. “But I just don’t know if it’s gonna be that clean. We’re just gonna have to be flexible and make the best of it we possibly can.”
If Penn State can make it to the start of the season without any other opt-outs, that would be a sizable win for Franklin and Co., especially considering the amount of NFL talent on the Nittany Lions’ roster.
A POTENTIAL MICAH PARSONS RETURN
Could Parsons still return to Penn State for his junior season? Well … probably not, but Franklin certainly didn’t rule out the possibility when speaking to reporters Thursday.
“You always keep the door open,” Franklin laughed, when asked about the chances of the future early-round NFL draft pick opting back in for the season. “But I think there’s obviously a big difference between somebody that opted out a week ago compared to somebody that opted out multiple weeks ago. It just makes it more complicated.”
When Parsons opted out in August, he cited COVID-19 concerns for him and his young son as the reason. Even with the Big Ten season now set to start — and with new and improved coronavirus testing protocols — those same concerns likely haven’t been entirely alleviated.
Parsons also signed with an agent and has been training for the NFL draft in California, further complicating the possibility of a return to college. None of that stopped Franklin from hinting at there being a chance of it happening, though.
“It was pretty fun hitting Micah up right after (the Big Ten’s announcement) and watching all the fans going crazy,” Franklin said. “So, we’ll see. We’ll see how it all plays out.”
RECRUITING MISSES/NCAA DEAD PERIOD EXTENDED
The NCAA Division I Council announced Wednesday that it had extended the recruiting dead period through Jan. 1. This means that no in-person recruiting can happen this fall — only phone calls and other forms of virtual correspondence can continue to occur.
That’s bad news for Franklin and his staff. Penn State has come up short so far with it’s 2021 class, and Franklin knows it.
“This class is not done, but up to this point, we haven’t gotten it done,” Franklin said. “We have not recruited up to the standard that we normally have. And I can make excuses. I can come up with a lot of reasons for that, but we haven’t gotten it done the way we normally have gotten it done. And there’s a lot of factors that go into that, but that’s just the reality of it.”
Penn State’s 2021 class is currently ranked No. 33 in the country and No. 8 in the Big Ten, according to 247Sports. The Nittany Lions most recently missed on the No. 1 player in Pennsylvania: five-star offensive tackle Nolan Rucci, who committed to Wisconsin on Sept. 8.
Even with the current No. 3 class for the 2022 cycle, Penn State will have to ramp up its efforts on the recruiting trail to maintain the level of talent it’s been accustomed to having on the roster.
“Moving forward, it’s complicated,” Franklin said. “It’s different. Obviously, you don’t have official visits. You don’t have unofficial visits. ... And obviously, where we’re located, it’s not like we have a bunch of recruits that live within an hour of campus. This is a place you’ve gotta come and see.”
This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 5:25 PM.
