Happiness in the Valley
After a season to forget in 2020, Penn State football's HC1 is leading an amazing turnaround less than a year later. At the core of the change? James Franklin is happy again.
James Franklin is never going to make excuses about how things went down for his football program in 2020. That’s not his style. But going into the 2020 season, Penn State had national championship aspirations. They were coming off their third 11-win season in 4 years, with electric players returning to support another strong class of incoming recruits. Then Covid-19 slammed the door shut on a spring season, temporarily canceled the B1G regular season, and then the B1G conference ultimately left schools with the worst of an awful situation by deciding to begin a shortened conference-only season in late October. Amidst all that craziness, Penn State lost its’ RB1 (Journey Brown to medical retirement), its’ LB1 (Micah Parsons to a Covid opt-out), and its’ HC1 (Franklin) had to make the most difficult decision of his life.
By now, most people who follow Penn State football know the story of James Franklin in 2020. For those who don’t, here’s a quick summary: Franklin’s youngest daughter, Addy, has sickle cell anemia which makes her more susceptible to Covid than the average person. Since it was decided that football would be played in 2020, Franklin and his family decided they needed to separate to ensure everyone’s health. It was a noble move: Franklin would, in theory, be around hundreds of people a day, greatly increasing the chances that he could get the disease or pass it to a family member. It seemed like the smart move.
But then the “season” began. Penn State got off to an 0-5 start, social media became a toxic wasteland toward their HC1, and the isolation Franklin was dealing with at a personal level also blended over into his work. We later found out that the team did not meet as a whole and in person until after they were 0-3. Franklin was not hosting recruits or traveling for recruiting. His days became monotonous and it showed on the field and on his face.
Many times during the horrendous start, Franklin looked to this observer like he wanted to be anywhere in the world but on a football field. I mean, who can blame the guy? For most of 2020, Franklin ended up not being able to do much of the work he loves to do AND his family was hundreds of miles away from him in Florida. It was a shitty situation no matter how much money Franklin was being paid to coach football.
The decision to play college football during the 2020 season had consequences — intended and not. The NCAA and universities across the country put the people in charge of football programs in no-win situations. It was a money move: big-time leaders were asking other big-time leaders to suck it up for the good of green.
During Covid, I began a daily writing routine as a way to pass time while being unemployed. I recently went through my entries and found one I wrote about Penn State and James Franklin after their 0-5 start in 2020. Here’s what it read:
Saturday’s in the fall at the Cerniglia household are for Penn State football. The program is one of the strongest ties to ALL of my family, so each season I spend quite a bit of time watching and thinking about the team. This year I’ve been thinking a lot about sacrifice, specifically with the team’s head coach, James Franklin. Franklin has a wife and two daughters, one of whom has sickle cell anemia and is at a much higher risk than most of the general public if she were to be exposed to Covid-19. Because of this, Franklin’s family has relocated to their family home in Florida until circumstances change. Franklin, meanwhile, has been alone in State College. His responsibilities as head coach of a big-time Division-1 football team directly put his family in great danger. The risk is too high, and so, as a family, they decided separation would be best.
But the separation between Franklin and his family is only part of the story of sacrifice. We know Franklin has sacrificed but we don’t truly know how much. We especially don’t know how the isolation has affected his well being and his ability to effectively lead Penn State in 2020. People like to point out that Franklin makes millions of dollars per year, so to those people, they don’t “feel” for him as they might for a Regular Joe. But Franklin’s sacrifice is real and no amount of money can bring his family safely into his home in Pennsylvania, and it can’t make up for the time lost either.
I hope that when this “season” mercifully ends that Franklin gets to spend a long time with his family. I’m not sure that he will, though. The responsibility, and yes, even the burden, of being the head coach of a Division-1 football team might ask too much of him. Whatever happens, we need to always remember that leaders often make sacrifices that make their personal lives more challenging but can benefit whoever they represent. In extreme times and not, sacrifice is real, and we should remember that before judging or criticizing someone.
Soft-spoken team leader Jahan Dotson made it clear that last year’s team lacked unity. And in 2020, Franklin was reported to be stoic and somber — the exact opposite of who he has shown he is every other season while at Penn State.
Of the 2020 season, Ben Jones, Penn State beat writer for statecollege.com, told me this:
For the most part it has turned out that a lot of the issues that plagued Penn State and a lot of the reasons Franklin gave weren't all made up. Penn State struggled to change its identity when it lost Noah Cain and Journey Brown, it also struggled to replace Micah Parsons and find itself on defense. This would have been hard during a normal year, let alone in a year when the team had to practice in different pods, couldn't be in the same room most of the time and coaches had to do a ton of work over Zoom. It simply wasn't the same.
In a recent media session, quarterback and team leader Sean Clifford said, “… the standards didn’t change, but we kind of changed a little bit. Because of Covid, we made excuses for things, and that’s not how we run our program.” Clifford later added the Penn Stat veterans asked for and got an offseason during 2020-21 described as the toughest under Franklin.
There is the old saying “what a difference a year can make.” Since the end of last season, a vaccine was made available for Covid-19, meaning all of the immediate Franklin family, including his daughters (ages 12 and 13) were eligible to get protection. They are together as a family again. Isolated no more.
Penn State football, meanwhile, has also been able to continue more “traditional” means of work. They’ve hosted several major recruiting events on campus since June and the team has been able to be together in a more “normal” capacity this year.
Fans, media, and maybe even some coaches and players at Penn State could have never guessed that almost exactly 365 days from the start of the 2020 B1G season that the football program would be ranked #4 in the country, riding a 9-game win streak, and boasting the #1 recruiting class in the nation.
The difference between then and now? They are obvious. Controllable and not. But the biggest change starts with HC1, James Franklin. Coach James Franklin (CJF) is CJF again. Happy. Smiling. Poking fun at reporters. He’s with his family. He’s been able to host recruits on campus in State College. Best of all, (from this observer’s outside opinion) his team seems closer-knit than in past years.
Sure, winning helps cure a lot of what was ailing Penn State prior to the start of the 2021 season. Winning leads to happiness. And happiness leads to the best things in life. Let’s credit James Franklin for his ability to navigate through a dark time at Penn State while leading the program once again into the bright spotlight. And let’s not forget all of the sacrifices Franklin made to find happiness once again.