Who’s next up at Penn State? AD Pat Kraft facing enormous decision after firing James Franklin

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The early discourse around Penn State’s decision Sunday to fire James Franklin has largely centered on whether athletics director Pat Kraft will be able to land a coach who would be considered an “upgrade.”

That’s a strange concept for anyone to get their arms around, however, when Franklin won 70 percent of his games, ran a highly competent program and had consistently put Penn State in the second tier of national championship contenders.

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It’s also a misread of the situation.

Because in college sports, only half of what happens is about the data on a spreadsheet. The rest is about how it makes people feel.

By the numbers, Penn State almost assuredly won’t be able to hire a coach whose record or list of accomplishments matches what Franklin did over the past 12 years. There aren’t many out there in the first place, and those who have proven the ability to do what Franklin couldn’t — we’re talking Kirby Smart, Ryan Day, Dabo Swinney, even Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame — aren’t leaving their current gigs.

But the college football ecosystem, for better or worse, is increasingly driven by vibes. They impact everything from conference realignment to the continual push for College Football Playoff expansion to the engagement level of donors in funding a roster that can compete for titles.

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The results, in aggregate, were fine at Penn State. The vibes were terrible.

And for Kraft, the bet is that swapping Franklin out — even for someone who might be less proven — is a vibe-changer.

The strategy is not risk-free. Without an obvious savior-level hire like Urban Meyer going to Florida in 2005 or Alabama luring Nick Saban from the NFL in 2007, Penn State’s calculus in firing Franklin at this moment brings to mind Indiana basketball’s frustration with Tom Crean continually hitting his head on a Sweet 16 ceiling and then firing him the next time he had a bad season.

Indiana is now on its third attempt at merely recapturing the level of year-in, year-out competence Crean brought to the table, much less trying to break through to a Final Four.

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Regardless of whom Penn State hires, there will be an immediate burst of excitement just because it’s something different. Beyond that? There are no guarantees.

Kraft, an Indiana alum whose future at Penn State will be directly tied to the outcome of this hire, presumably understands the inherent long-term risk in axing a successful coach.

But do the fans who are counting on Kraft to deliver someone they consider to be a clear upgrade?

That’s the tricky part.

People familiar with the way Kraft operates expect him to take some huge swings because he truly believes he’s got one of the best jobs in the country to offer.

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Realistically, though, nobody should expect Dan Lanning to leave Oregon or Freeman to leave Notre Dame. Texas A&M’s Mike Elko, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, is more plausible except for the fact that there’s only going to be one winner in a bidding war with the Aggies and it’s not going to be whoever’s on the other side.

Even a pursuit of Indiana’s Curt Cignetti — the hottest of hot names right now — could be tricky. Not only will Indiana be all-in on making sure he spends the rest of his career in Bloomington, the Hoosiers look like a team that could be playing in a CFP semifinal on Jan. 8 or 9.

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It’s going to be crucial for Penn State or any program with an opening to have their coach in place by the time the transfer portal opens on Jan. 2.

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Which brings us back to the vibes question and the interesting case of Matt Rhule.

Rhule, in his third year at Nebraska, spent his high school years in State College and walked on to Penn State’s football team. It’s also well-documented that Kraft was his athletic director at Temple, and their friendship goes well beyond the typical athletic director-coach dynamic.

On one hand, Rhule has proven now three times that he’s an elite program builder. He is responsible for two of the three 10-win seasons in the history of Temple football. He took Baylor from the fallout of scandal to the Sugar Bowl by his third season. And though Nebraska hasn’t fully broken through yet, he’s 5-1 this year and seemingly on the upward trajectory.

But without the context of why Rhule’s 2-23 record against top-25 teams is different than Franklin’s struggles against elite competition, Kraft would have to answer for why he spent tens of millions to replace a winning coach with someone who hasn’t been as successful.

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Even if the answer is merely that Kraft believes in the intangibles that Rhule brings to the table, he must remember that how his constituents feel about the hire — whether it’s fair or not — will dictate whether he achieves the vibe shift that Frankling’s firing was supposed to accomplish.

Hey, nobody said this stuff was easy.

Penn State’s search could, and should, go beyond just the handful of obvious names that have been linked to the job like Cignetti, Rhule and Elko.

If there’s one thing everyone in college football agrees on, it’s that the sport is on the precipice of potentially apocalyptic cycle of coaching changes. If jobs like Florida, Florida State, Wisconsin, Auburn and Kentucky open to go along with Virginia Tech, UCLA, Oklahoma State and Arkansas, there will be a massive domino effect that will not necessarily just involve assistants or Group of Five head coaches being pulled up the ladder.

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That’s great news for the likes of Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz, Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin, Washington’s Jedd Fisch, Iowa State’s Matt Campbell, Duke’s Manny Diaz and Georgia Tech’s Brent Key, who have good situations currently but will also have interesting options to consider.

This could also be a year where we see what’s known in the coaching industry as “resetting the clock.” That essentially means that a coach could choose to leave a year or two before they might be on the hot seat and get a fresh start with a new fan base.

That group could plausibly include Southern Cal’s Lincoln Riley, LSU’s Brian Kelly, South Carolina’s Shane Beamer and even Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, who is the toast of the town after wins over Georgia, Vanderbilt and Missouri but is only a two-game losing streak away from having that fan base flip on him again.

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Given the amount of runway before he has to make a hire, preferably in early December, Kraft should probably check in on all those names before locking in on one candidate.

But the idea that Penn State can upgrade its coaching situation is not as clear-cut as Kraft’s swift and decisive action Sunday might lead fans to believe.

It’s highly likely Franklin will be replaced by someone with a weaker overall résumé, but if the next coach can fix the vibes problem that seemed to linger over the program once it hit a clear plateau, Penn State will consider its $49 million in buyout money well spent.

This news was originally published on this post .

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