‘We can’t get complacent,’ Penn State’s James Franklin says after Nick Saban’s COVID-19 diagnosis
James Franklin knows no one is invincible from getting COVID-19. Sure, precautions help, but there are no guarantees. Penn State’s seventh-year head coach was again reminded of this reality on Wednesday evening, when Alabama head coach Nick Saban announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
With the Nittany Lions’ Oct. 24 season opener at Indiana just nine days away, Franklin is continuing to encourage his players to take the necessary precautions they’ve been taking.
“I said to them today after practice, I said, ‘Guys, please, we can’t get complacent with this,’” Franklin told reporters Wednesday. “‘We can’t get casual with this. Because as soon as you do, it gets you.’”
Franklin admits he’s “the nag” of the team, always ensuring everyone is social distancing and wearing their masks at practice. He said he and his staff have relied on the guidance of the team’s medical experts — like director of athletic medicine Wayne Sebastianelli, head athletic trainer Andy Mutnan and team physician Gregory Billy — to learn how to navigate training during the pandemic.
As much as Penn State tries to provide a controlled environment for its players and staff, Franklin knows that individuals making responsible decisions away from the program is just as crucial to successfully completing the season.
“As soon as we made this decision to play college football, we knew there were going to be definite challenges that came with it,” he said. “... There were going to have to be significant sacrifices made, and there was going to have to be significant discipline shown by everybody. We’re just trying to do the best we possibly can to make this thing work and not only in how we play on the field and how we scheme and how we coach, but the discipline of how we conduct ourselves away from the Lasch Football Building and Beaver Stadium.”
Franklin himself has had to make plenty of sacrifices, too.
During a June interview on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” Franklin said his wife, Fumi, and their two daughters, Shola and Addison, would stay at the family’s vacation home in Florida while he coaches this season. Franklin made the decision to isolate from his family because Addison — who is 12 years old and his youngest daughter — suffers from sickle cell disease, which puts her at greater risk of getting infected with the virus.
None of the members of Penn State’s coaching staff have had their families around at practice like they normally would. This has made the vibe feel a bit different around a program that prides itself on being family-oriented.
“The new staff and the new players are having a very different Penn State experience than normal,” Franklin said. “... It’s different. We’re having challenges and issues. I’m having challenges and issues with it with my wife and kids. We’ve got a pretty good way of going about our business around here, in including our families as much as possible. And even stuff like bringing the freshmen home to my house for dinner, or bringing a position group to my house for dinner. We just have less of that.”
But Franklin understands that there’s nothing he can do to alter the situation his group faces. It’s something that he and his team must continue to find new ways to deal with.
And that’s something they’ll continue to work on every day.
“Major college football’s a lot of hard work, but you want to make sure that you’re having fun with it, too, and finding that balance,” Franklin said. “And it’s been difficult. So there’s been more things that we’ve had to work through, just things that have come up that I think is a direct correlation to COVID and how we’re living right now.”
This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 6:16 PM.
