Shucks, says the pure as the driven snow guy Penn State has brought in to coach football and remove the taint of its past, I can’t take credit for our terrific recruitment so far.
“It has very little to do with me… It’s the staff, it’s the players, it’s the tradition, it’s the history, it’s the fans showing out 72,000 at the spring game. … It’s the whole package. That’s why we’re being successful. We’re just, I think, doing a pretty good job of painting that picture of the vision of what Penn State can be and what it will be… I had a lot of confidence that we would be able to do a good job of finding those guys, attracting them to Penn State and getting them on board to join our family.“
The family, the family, always the family. And what a family. Startlingly dysfunctional. But you bring in a guy like James Franklin, and you’re bringing back solid values. Like for instance at his last job, at Vanderbilt, after four football players were accused of raping a student, he apparently called the student right away:
[Attorneys claim] the victim was contacted by Franklin [and Dwight Galt, also now coaching at Penn State] during a medical examination four days after the rape to explain “that they cared about her because she assisted them with recruiting.”
[Attorneys] went on to say that at some point, “Coach Franklin called her in for a private meeting and told her he wanted her to get fifteen pretty girls together and form a team to assist with the recruiting even though he knew it was against the rules. He added that all the other colleges did it.”
So Franklin means it when he says he can’t take credit for his recruiting success – at least his success at Vanderbilt. If it weren’t for the Comfort Women in the Vanderbilt family (and who knows what he’s got cooking in the Penn State family?), the magic wouldn’t have happened.
[I]f Franklin had a role in organizing a hostess program, that is a new development in the entire story.
What is probably clear is Penn State has either done an extremely thorough vetting process and determined there is absolutely nothing to be concerned with in the long-term, or the school totally swung and missed on the biggest black cloud that could potentially linger over the new head coach. Given the position Penn State has been in since 2011, the margin for error is barely existent.
Penn State. Never a dull day.
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Update: A reminder that Penn State knew what it had in Franklin.
April 30th, 2014 at 8:39AM
A house of cards, a puff of air and…..
April 30th, 2014 at 10:29AM
According to USA Today, Franklin is the guy who said this:
“I will not hire an assistant coach until I’ve seen his wife. If she looks the part, and she’s a D-1 recruit, then you got a chance to get hired. That’s part of the deal. There’s a very strong correlation between having the confidence, going up and talking to a woman, and being quick on your feet and having some personality and confidence and being fun and articulate, than it is walking into a high school and recruiting a kid and selling him.”
Among the many other things this appears to mean is that Franklin will not hire an assistant coach who is a woman or a gay man.
Franklin is a pig. Penn State is a pigsty.
April 30th, 2014 at 11:54PM
Pig or not, Franklin’s biggest crime has been that he’s too forthcoming, nearly every big time program has their “hostess” affiliates, and what took place at Oklahoma State, with their Orange Pride student hostess org, is the template to get coeds to recruits. One of my hs basketball teammates was heavily recruited starting his junior year, nearly all the major West Coast programs were soliciting his services. He told us of girls who he met, who he knew were arranged by the coaching staff, to be his date while attending a visit paid by the uni. When he got back, the girls would call him, telling him how much they cared/loved him, all that crap. This has been AD common fare since they professionalized college athletics back in 1917…..