James Franklin couldn’t win the big games — but that’s not why he got fired by Penn State.
He could always be counted on to beat less talented teams — until he couldn’t, and that’s why he was fired Sunday after a 3-3 start for the Nittany Lions, who were the AP’s No. 2-ranked preseason team but have yet to beat a Power 4 team so far this season.
The rest only made it easier for PSU to serve Franklin a pink slip before most students got their fall break.
Franklin pushed his chips into the center of the table following the 2024 season and convinced his bosses to double down on the team they’d already put together and add one or two missing pieces — the Ohio State blueprint at work. They bought in. Players that could’ve tested the transfer portal market, like quarterback Drew Allar, defensive end Dani Dennis-Sutton and running backs Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen, were all well-compensated to stay put. There was no replacing a player of tight end Tyler Warren’s caliber, but adding receivers that could help Allar and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki reach their potential as a tandem was paramount. Former USC WR Kyron Hudson and Syracuse WR Trebor Pena footed the bill.
After Tom Allen left Happy Valley to become Clemson’s defensive coordinator, Franklin took his biggest swing to date on an assistant when he hired Jim Knowles, the architect of the nation’s best scoring defense, away from Ohio State. Penn State broke the bank to do it, too. At $3.1 million, Knowles is the highest-paid assistant in school history.
Knowles’ defense was the only one able to defeat what was No. 1-ranked Oregon, and he showed an aptitude to learn from his failures. After former Ducks QB Dillon Gabriel carved up his defense in the regular season (22-of-34 for 341 yards and two scores), Knowles’ Buckeyes sacked Gabriel eight times and held Oregon to negative 23 rushing yards in a dominant 41-21 victory in the College Football Playoff semifinals.
Ohio State’s defense allowed just 12.9 points per game last season and were as difficult to figure out as a Rubik’s Cube with a twisted corner. That’s the reason Knowles was hired to coach Penn State’s defense. However, then he got beat by Oregon at home, which began the great unraveling that led to Franklin’s $56.6 million buyout just halfway through the season.
Had Penn State beaten Oregon, its losses to unranked UCLA and Northwestern to follow would’ve been tough to swallow, but I doubt they would’ve led to Franklin’s firing. Penn State had beaten 36 consecutive ranked opponents before losing to UCLA and, in so doing, became the first top-10 ranked team to lose to an 0-4 team in 40 years. The ensuing loss to Northwestern and Allar’s season-ending injury were too much for Penn State’s leadership to bear.
Penn State HC James Franklin interacts with QB Drew Allar at Beaver Stadium on August 30, 2025. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)
[MORE: 2025 College Football Rankings: Ohio State Steady, Indiana Soars, Oregon Falls]
The clock is ticking on finding out how to sustain a winning culture at Penn State that can result in a championship and regularly beating its peers. The Nittany Lions haven’t beaten the Buckeyes in nine years and are 0-7 against Ohio State and Michigan in their past seven combined meetings. Penn State was 4-21 against top-10 opponents under Franklin and hasn’t beaten a top-10 opponent from a Power 4 conference in more than 1,000 days (Utah on Jan. 2, 2023). It hasn’t beaten a top 10 opponent from the Big Ten in nearly nine years (Wisconsin on Dec. 3, 2016).
Now that Matt Patricia has Ohio State’s defense looking like Thanos when he grabbed the Power Stone from the Infinity Gauntlet and punched Captain Marvel in the face with it, Knowles doesn’t look as great a defensive architect. Especially given that Penn State hasn’t beaten a power conference team this season, it felt like it was only a matter of time before Franklin either fired a coordinator or was fired himself. With Allar at QB, Penn State had been 22-0 against unranked opponents, but 0-2 in their past two games against such teams.
You can see how Penn State’s administration wanted to prevent a further slide into the great unknown of mediocrity before it’s too late. However, when programs are willing to shell out $56.6 million to go away, no head coach is safe in his job.
Every coach is expendable at a time when no one is sure how the future will look for their programs with revenue-sharing, NIL, unprecedented roster turnover and an extended College Football Playoff.
Penn State HC James Franklin reacts to a play at Beaver Stadium on September 13, 2025. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)
The next hire for the Penn State job will have to be a forward thinker.
Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein, South Florida head coach Alex Golesh, Memphis head coach Ryan Silverfield, Miami (Fla.) offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson and LSU defensive coordinator Blake Baker come to mind. They’re great ball coaches, but are they great CEOs at the Power 4 level?
That’s the skill set needed at a program like Penn State. What will send a shock through college football is that Franklin had that skill set. Still, he couldn’t win the games that mattered most or the ones he was supposed to, and that is untenable in the shark tank that is college football in 2025.
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