If you can't handle me at my Bo Pelini, don't love me at my Mark Richt
Breaking down the common coaching comparisons you'll see
In case you missed it somehow, Penn State fired James Franklin after three straight losses on Sunday. I’m not going to get into the why or the how here, as you can find that in the Penn State Coaching Shortlist that was released yesterday.
Instead, we’re going to spend today’s newsletter focusing on the two coaching comparisons I’ve seen thrown out in the comments of basically every article about Franklin’s firing: Bo Pelini and Mark Richt. You may see some Frank Solich tossed around, but Pelini is by far the better comparison.
For my new college football fans or people that need a refresher, neither of those names likely ring a bell. And that’s fair, as neither has been in major college football coaching since 2018, when Richt was leading the Miami Hurricanes. For Pelini, it all ended in 2014.
Neither of these coaches are all that relevant on the field, so why are they being brought up incessantly now? Even by me?
This is a university looking to break through. They want more than 10-win seasons. They want a national title.
Is this your Mark Richt fire? Or your Bo Pelini?
- Griffin Olah, SID Sports (Feeling the heat and getting burned, Oct. 13, 2025)
That’s right, it’s because of their firings and the circumstances surrounding them. Consider this the deep dive on the Franklin tenure and a sister piece to yesterday’s shortlist because we’re diving deep.
Penn State Coaching Shortlist (plus Oregon State and UAB):
Consistent Success
Before we get into the three firings, we should establish a baseline to talk about these three coaches.
You already know the story of Franklin at Penn State. A 104-45 mark in 12 years at Happy Valley. Consistently good teams that could never break through. A 4-21 mark against AP Top 10 teams and an even worse 1-18 record against in-conference Top 10 foes, most often Michigan and Ohio State. The moniker “Big Game James” didn’t come from a place of love, after all.
But you also have to consider what went right at Penn State under Franklin. The Nittany Lions were still reeling from the Jerry Sandusky scandal and fall from grace of legendary head coach Joe Paterno. Sure, two solid years under Bill O’Brien helped stabilize the program, but Franklin is really the one who brought it back to a strong, healthy building. He was an elite recruiter, bringing the likes of Micah Parsons, Abdul Carter, Tyler Warren, Nicholas Singleton, Dani Dennis-Sutton, Kaytron Allen, Saquon Barkley, Trace McSorley and so many more to Happy Valley. Not only that, he developed the talent he had.
He also made an impact on the university, getting Penn State to expand their coaching salary pool to one of the largest in the nation. Millions and millions of dollars were committed to improving the facilities for not just the football team, but all of Penn State’s athletic programs. Sure, Franklin may not have made himself a full home in Happy Valley, but he left Penn State miles better than where he found them.
But that’s all with Franklin. What about the other two?
For each, we’re going to focus on a singular time in their coaching careers. Pelini is easy - he was only the head coach at Nebraska. We’ll focus on Richt’s time at Georgia for this exercise.
Starting with Richt, we can see the similarities. A 15-year run with a strong school. A great 145-51 record overall with the Dawgs. Double-digit wins in 10 of his 15 seasons. He even won the big games, going 25-13 against ranked opponents in his first seven seasons. But, he saw a downturn on that later, going 14-23 in the second half of his time between the hedges and 0-2 in 2015 before his firing.
Richt earned a similar reputation to Franklin - he couldn’t win the big games. Despite consistent AP Top 10 rankings, Richt could never crack the BCS voting systems or, later on in his career, the College Football Playoff rankings. They saw plenty of bowls, but just three New Year’s Six bowls. Each year was praised as the breakthrough season for Georgia under Richt, and each year the Dawgs beat who they should, lost a few games, and played in a solid bowl with a decent ranking. Sound familiar?
Moving to Pelini, he didn’t have the same sustained success as Franklin and Richt. Pelini’s Nebraska teams were all ranked, including a couple of Top 10 rankings, but all finished with four losses aside from his final year, which ended with three. Bowls were commonplace for the Huskers. But Pelini, like the others we’ve discussed, couldn’t win big game. He was 8-17 against ranked opponents. His Huskers never made a BCS bowl or won a Big Ten Championship. In the press conference following Pelini’s dismissal, athletic director Shawn Einhorn kicked off an all to familiar refrain: “We weren’t good enough in the games that mattered.”
So we have three coaches. All at schools that want to cosplay as blue bloods based on their past success. All that came up short in the games that mattered - rivalries, postseason games, ranked opponents. All that were shown the door in hopes that the grass was greener on the other side.
The Other Side
So what happened after each firing?
We’ll start in Lincoln, Nebraska. Pelini was fired ahead of the 2015 Nebraska team’s Holiday Bowl game against USC. Interim head coach Barney Cotton couldn’t get his team to win the close game and he goes down as an 0-1 interim coach for Nebraska. That would be emblematic of the post-Pelini era in Lincoln.
Nebraska turned to Mike Riley fresh off a long and illustrious career leading the Oregon State program into national relevance. He struggled a bit at first, going 6-7 in his first season with the Huskers. The next year, 2016, saw a Pelini-like 9-3 record. That would be the high water mark for the post-Pelini Huskers.
2017 was a disaster, with Riley’s program plummeting to 4-8. A new athletic director, who replaced the previously mentioned Einhorn after he got the boot, decided that Riley wasn’t going to work and kicked the coach to the curb. New athletic director Bill Moos made the move after only five weeks in the athletic director’s chair. He decided he needed somebody that knew the program to lead the Huskers back to relevance. That someone would be the golden boy, a former quarterback that just hoisted the claim to a national title. Of course, we’re talking about Scott Frost.
And boy was that a disaster. Now, Frost simply calls his move away from UCF to his alma mater “a bad move.” Good on you for recognizing that, Scott, but that may be underselling it. Frost saw his beloved Huskers plummet to an atrocious 16-31 record. He routinely blamed everyone except for himself. His program ran afoul of the Big Ten after violating COVID protocols in the 2020 season. 2021 saw the Huskers claim to fame as “The Greatest 3-9 Team Ever.” The school agreed not to fire Frost after an NCAA investigation turned up possible violations of on-field staffing. Eventually, enough was enough. The Frost tenure ended mercifully in 2022. It was so bad, Frost had to escape to the NFL to find a coaching job.
Now, Nebraska is finally showing signs of life under Matt Rhule. They sit at 5-1 and Rhule has taken the Huskers to their first bowl game since Riley’s 9-4 season in 2016. Still, Nebraska fired Pelini because he couldn’t take the program the next step. Instead, the program fell face-first down the stairs, ending in a heap of broken bones and massive medical bills. Only now have they dusted themselves off and returned to relevance.
But what about Georgia?
Richt was fired for most of the same reasons as the other two - he couldn’t win the big games and couldn’t take the next step with his Dawgs. It worked out pretty well when Georgia snagged Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart. Kirby has accomplished what Richt couldn’t and has turned Georgia into the closest thing to a dynasty post-Saban. Smart has held the job ever since and is 110-20 overall in Athens with back-to-back National Championships in 2021 and 2022. Each year, the Dawgs are in contention for the SEC and CFP crowns.
Onward, Penn State
Now, it’s time to look at Franklin and Penn State. We’ve looked at the two most common comparisons. One (Richt) is good, where a new coach can elevate the program and they can finally make the jump. One (Pelini) is bad and the program takes steps back, not knowing what they had was the best they could get.
Where does Penn State fall on that?
It’s impossible to tell, especially before the hire is made. You can argue that Penn State is in a better position than both Georgia and Nebraska were when they made their fated firings and I might be inclined to believe you on that. Franklin has debatably taken his teams to higher highs than Richt and certainly higher than Pelini.
It’s also a completely new world, with a 12-team playoff, NIL, House revenue sharing payments and unlimited transfers. Kirby could take advantage of that rather early in his Georgia tenure, but Pelini’s predecessors couldn’t sniff any of that.
But where’s the fun in just tossing your hands up and declaring who knows? We’re here for hot takes after all!
Alright, you want takes, you’ll get takes.
Penn State will fall somewhere in between these two. They won’t fall like Nebraska did, at least, I don’t think they will, but they have to be mindful of who they hire. They also likely won’t turn into a multi-year dynasty like Smart at Georgia because Smart is a one-of-one coach. There isn’t another guy like him out there.
Based on my coaching shortlist, there are two main candidates for the job. If I’m Penn State, I’m giving Indiana’s Curt Cignetti a blank check. He’s proven he can win across all levels, including taking decrepit Indiana from the Tom Allen era (33-49) and most losses all time in the Power Four, to a 17-2 record, Number One ranking in my latest Top 25 and No. 3 in the AP, a CFP appearance, and inside track to the Big Ten title game after a road win over Oregon, who had only one loss at home under Dan Lanning. He wins. A lot. You want to avoid a Nebraska situation? Bring Cignetti home.
But, by all reporting, Cignetti isn’t the front runner for the job. Instead, it’s Matt Rhule, who has pointed Nebraska upwards finally. Rhule, to me, has shades of Franklin in his game. He’s a voracious program builder that leaves each program better than he found it, turning around Temple and post-Briles scandal Baylor. He’s shown he can at least start to win in the Big Ten with Nebraska this year. Plus, he’s an alunmi of Penn State and is buddy-buddy with the current AD. But, Rhule has another Franklin-like trait: he doesn’t win the big game. Rhule is 2-25 against Top 25 teams and 0-7 at Nebraska. He’s even worse than Franklin in Top 10 games at 0-11. Is that really who you want?
None of that takes away from what either coach has accomplished. And plenty of the other coaches on my shortlist and left off are strong candidates by their own rights. But Penn State sits on the edge of a blade here. Do you become Nebraska post-Bo Pelini? Or does your new, Kirby Smart-like head coach erase the pain of the Mark Richt era?
Penn State, that’s for you to decide.
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