Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

James Franklin wants Penn State to take next step

The Nittany Lions received “obnoxious rings” for their Big Ten title last month. Now their coach wants more.

Penn State head coach James Franklin took center stage during a picnic held on campus after last month's Blue-White Game and handed out what he called "big, nasty, fat, obnoxious rings" to his players honoring them for winning the 2016 Big Ten championship.

And then, definitively, Franklin closed the book on last season.

"We've talked about the Big Ten championship and getting these rings," Franklin said Monday before the Penn State "coaches caravan" alumni reception in King of Prussia. "But now that we've gotten these rings, we're not talking about it again. It's over.

"There's no more discussing that. We're on to the next season and what we need to do moving forward. We want to take all those experiences and the confidence and the wisdom that came from it, but stay true to our identity, which his blue-collar, hard-nosed, detail-oriented."

Fueled by an October upset of No. 2 Ohio State, the Nittany Lions won the Big Ten East Division title. They rallied from a 21-point deficit to defeat Wisconsin, 38-31, for the conference championship and earned a bid to the Rose Bowl, where they lost to Southern California on a field goal on the game's final play.

But to Franklin, that's all in the past. He said his admonition to his players about forgetting last year had nothing to do with any lack of focus during Penn State's spring practice sessions.

"It wasn't anything I saw that concerned me," he said. "Last year I talked to them about, we didn't have anybody in that room on that team that had won a Big Ten championship before, so how do we achieve something that no one in this room had done before? OK, now we've done that.

"The next thing is that next goal, and there's nobody in this room that's achieved that before, so how do we do it? So whatever we did last year isn't good enough this year moving forward, and it's always going to be that kind of approach."

Franklin did not say what that next goal was but the assumption was more along the lines of national championship than returning to the Rose Bowl and winning.

The coach added that there was no time to take a deep breath after last year's 11-3 record, saying, "It's just not how I'm wired.

"I feel like we have taken one step in a very long journey," he said. "For the programs that we want to compete with, we've still got a long ways to go. We've taken one really nice step but we've still got a long ways to go."

Contract extension

Athletic director Sandy Barbour, who said before the Rose Bowl that things were "moving along" on a contract extension for Franklin, said Monday that "we're almost there."

Franklin is in the fourth year of a six-year contract that he signed upon his hiring in January 2014. His salary for this year is a guaranteed $4.3 million, but he can earn as much as $1 million more in incentives.

"The awesome thing is that nobody feels like there's any urgency," Barbour said. "We agreed frankly a long time ago on the things that were important in a relatively short period of time, and then have just been taking our time since then to cross the T's and dot the I's. I think it won't be long."

Said Franklin, "I think we're in a good place."

jjuliano@phillynews.com

@joejulesinq