Coaching Report Card: James Franklin at Virginia Tech
Setting the bar high
And just like that, the carousel starts swinging the opposite direction with hirings.
Virginia Tech joins Kent State as the FBS programs that have officially hired a coach this cycle, signing a deal with former Penn State head coach James Franklin.
The hiring comes after reports that Franklin was waiting out the cycle to see what other high-profile jobs, Florida State in particular, were going to come open. Since Franklin’s firing at Penn State, rumors connected him with the vacant Virginia Tech job.
Details on the contract between Franklin and Virginia Tech are currently unavailable. However, Franklin and Penn State signed a deal ahead of the hiring announcement to drop his buyout from $49 million down to a one-time payment of $9 million, with offset clauses removed.
Welcome to a new format: Coaching Report Cards. Each head coach hired will get a report card based on how I think the hiring will go. You’ll get an overview of the job and the candidate based on the off-field and on-field fits. Then, I’ll give my final grade with some added thoughts.
Off-field overview
Virginia Tech, competing in the ACC, hasn’t been a major player in years. The previous coach, Brent Pry, mustered only a 16-24 mark with the Hokies. In a fun turn of events, Pry was hired by Virginia Tech after a stint as Franklin’s defensive coordinator at Happy Valley.
Still, Virginia Tech hasn’t had a good run since the retirement of program legend Frank Beamer. The hire of Justin Fuente was disastrous. Pry showed promise, but never delivered.
Franklin is without a doubt the best coach the Hokies have had since the Beamer era. He enters with a career record of 128-60 at Penn State and Vanderbilt. We talked a lot about the downfall of Franklin at Penn State, but he deserves credit for what he did off the field to get the Nittany Lions in a better situation.
More on Franklin’s firing:
Franklin energized the fractured and disorganized Penn State boosters to not just find but keep talent in Happy Valley. He encouraged those boosters to invest millions upon millions into his staff, including giving defensive coordinator Jim Knowles the largest contract for a coordinator in college football history.
That momentum should continue at Virginia Tech, where the board of trustees pledged a $229 million increase in the athletics budget prior to Franklin’s hiring. Watch that number soar as Franklin hits the booster trails.
We also have to consider recruiting. Virginia Tech sits in a super fertile recruiting area, the DMV (DC-Maryland-Virginia) and Tidewater (Virginia-New Jersey). Tons of Tech’s all-time greats hail from the area, and Beamer put up a wall around the DMV to make sure that his program took the best of the best.
That wall has eroded for Virginia Tech in recent years as national programs pillaged the top talent in the area. One of the worst offenders? James Franklin’s Penn State. He pulled the likes of Trace McSorley, Tyler Warren, Kaytron Allen, and Tony Rojas from the Tidewater area. The DMV region brought stars like Olu Fashanu, Dani Dennis-Sutton, and Chop Robinson.
Virginia Tech has traditionally done well in those regions. Like I mentioned earlier, Beamer-era stars like Michael Vick, Kam Chancellor, Tyrod Taylor, Kendall and Kyle Fuller, Bruce Smith and others hailed from the DMV and Tidewater.
The Fuente era destroyed all the goodwill the Beamer era brought in the regions, as Fuente neglected Virginia high schools and built only bad relationships with the coaches he did talk to. Pry put work in to try to re-establish those pipelines, but Franklin doesn’t have to put work in. They know him. And they trust him.
He’s already going to work to flip current Penn State recruits from the DMV and Tidewater to Virginia Tech. And you bet he’s going to run roughshod on the Penn State roster, bringing his guys on once the portal opens.
On-field outlook
All of that before we even look on the field.
Virginia Tech’s roster isn’t great as it’s currently constructed. You can see that just based on the current season results. But Franklin will get his team in shape, he always does.
The big boost for Big Game James in the ACC is the lack of big games. There isn’t a superpower waiting to crush the hopes and dreams of any program. Clemson has slipped in recent years. Florida State is currently begging for pocket change to start pulling together a “Fire Mike Norvell” piggy bank. Miami is still figuring out clock management, let alone contending in the ACC. The league’s top teams are a senior-heavy Georgia Tech, a portal-remade Virginia, oil-rich newcomer SMU, and somehow Pat Narduzzi-led Pittsburgh.
Tell me right now with a straight face that Franklin can’t go in and immediately build a competitive ACC team.
That’s right, you can’t.
10 wins was the standard for Penn State under James Franklin. He hit that almost every year, but couldn’t take the next step. 10 wins at Virginia Tech? A godsend. A return to form. Even if he doesn’t compete for national titles, ACC competition and some playoff bids are all-time great seasons in Blacksburg.
Grade: A+
To date, I’ve only given out two A+ hire grades: Charles Huff to Southern Miss and Franklin to Virginia Tech.
This move makes the most sense of anything I’ve seen since starting this newsletter. For both sides. Franklin hits the sidelines immediately and gets to start constructing his roster to compete in a winnable conference. Virginia Tech gets - and this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers - someone you could debate as their best coach of all time.
Sure, Franklin might leave for greener pastures in just a few short years, chasing a CFP National Championship. Or, he could build that winner in Blacksburg.
This is the first true hire of the carousel. And it may be the best.
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