Going 4-17 against the Ohio State Buckeyes and TTUN will be the stain on James Franklin's Penn State Nittany Lions legacy, according to CBS Sports' Brad Crawford, who correctly labeled preseason No. 2 PSU one of the 2025 season's biggest underachievers after going 6-6 in the regular season.
Crawford reminded the Virginia Tech Hokies head coach that his previous tenure will only be remembered for the bad times in Happy Valley, despite a 100-25 record against every other team besides the good guys and the villains.
15 straight losses (2-21 overall) to top-six opponents, that being second-worst by any FBS head coach all time, and being the first FBS school since the 1978 season to lose consecutive games as 20-point favorites at the spread, make for a compelling case, notes Crawford.
"Imagine telling yourself in August that James Franklin would be Virginia Tech's head coach by season's end? You wouldn't have believed it. After retaining a number of key players who led the Nittany Lions one win shy of a national championship game appearance last season, Franklin and Penn State fell quickly as a preseason top-3 team. The double-overtime loss to Oregon was tough to stomach, but nothing compared to what the next several weeks would involve, including the colossal setback at UCLA the next time out," Crawford wrote.
"Franklin was fired after an unfathomable three-game slide in Big Ten play took Penn State out of the national rankings altogether, a shocking faceplant for a program that appeared to have turned the corner under his regime. Franklin leaves the program with the second-most coaching wins all time in Happy Valley with 104 victories, tied with Rip Engle and behind the legendary Joe Paterno. However, his tenure will primarily be remembered for how it ended. Not the good times."
College Football's preseason poll was abhorrent. Not only did Penn State radically disappoint, but so did the No. 1 Texas Longhorns and No. 4 Clemson Tigers. Even OSU was a relative disappointment for not winning a CFP game after dominantly rattling off four victories last year.
James Franklin escapes Ohio State and Michigan but still won't win the big one
Franklin is soon going to be in the same boat in Blacksburg that Joey McGuire is in with the Texas Tech Red Raiders in Lubbock: he won't be able to win the big one, even with a bloated payroll to work with.
Virginia Tech is expected to be financially committed to athletics, with $229 million expected to be invested into the Hokies within the next four years. That won't make Franklin a go-to guy when the going gets tough. Perhaps if he can hire the right coaching staff, he can outsource being that guy to a coordinator or assistant.
Even though the Buckeyes and Wolverines won't be on the schedule in the regular season, Franklin won't escape what ails him the most. So expect more of the same from his Nittany Lions stint. They'll take that at Virginia Tech, given the program's recent history.