Blue White Illustrated

P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> TALE OF THE TAPE MEMPHIS PENN STATE RECORD 12-1 (7-1 American Athletic Conference) 10-2 (7-2 Big Ten) RANKING 15th AP, 15th coaches, 17th CFP 13th AP, 12th coaches, 10th CFP HEAD COACH Ryan Silverfield (Hampden-Sydney College, '03) James Franklin (East Stroudsburg, '95) COACH'S RECORD 0-0 55-23 in six seasons (Overall record: 79-38) COACH'S BOWL RECORD 0-0 4-4 SCHOOL'S BOWL RECORD 5-7 29-18-2 COTTON BOWL RECORD 0-0 2-0-1 MOST RECENT BOWL Lost to Wake Forest, 37-34, in the 2018 Lost to Kentucky, 27-24, in the 2019 Citrus Bowl Birmingham Bowl BASIC OFFENSE Multiple (40.5 ppg, 480.7 ypg) Spread (34.3 ppg, 402.2 ypg) RUSHING LEADER Kenneth Gainwell (222 att, 1,425 yds, 12 TDs) Journey Brown (113 att, 688 yds, 10 TDs) PASSING LEADER Brady White (3,560 yds, 33 TDs, 9 int, 64.1 pct) Sean Clifford (2,521 yds, 22 TDs, 6 int, 59.5 pct) RECEIVING LEADER Damonte Coxie (68 rec, 1,144 yds, 9 TDs) K.J. Hamler (54 rec, 858 yds, 8 TDs) BASIC DEFENSE Multiple (24.4 ppg, 372.3 ypg) 4-3 (14.1 ppg, 330.2 ypg) TACKLE LEADER Austin Hall (30 asst, 39 solo, 69 total) Micah Parsons (50 asst, 45 solo, 95 total) SACK LEADER Bryce Huff (6, 41 yds) Yetur Gross-Matos (8.5, 66 yds) INTERCEPTION LEADERS Sanchez Blake Jr., Quindell Johnson (2) John Reid, Tariq Castro-Fields, Jaquan Brisker (2) around, as five players have 20 or more catches. Leading that group is redshirt junior Damonte Coxie with 68 receptions for 1,144 yards and nine touchdowns. Even before the matchup was officially announced, James Franklin was well-ac- quainted with the Memphis program. He used to share a home state with the Tigers, having begun his head coaching career in Tennessee, and he's even coached on their home field, as his first Vanderbilt team fell to Cincinnati in the 2011 Liberty Bowl at Liberty Bowl Memo- rial Stadium in Memphis. He's also got an assistant coach on his staff who knows even more about the Tigers than he does, as special teams coordinator Joe Lorig spent three years on Norvell's staff before heading briefly to Texas Tech and then to Penn State this past February. "I've got some familiarity and have watched them on TV," Franklin said. "From what I've seen, they're a very, very athletic team. They're a very confident team. And they're used to winning and have been doing it now for a number of years. I know they're going to come into this game ex- pecting to do the same thing. So it's going to be a tremendous challenge." Memphis is facing some challenges of its own, and one is the perpetual challenge that Group of Five schools must confront: the need to retain the coaching talent they groom. Because of their success in recent years, the Tigers have found themselves having to fend off Power Five schools, and they haven't always been able to do it. In December 2011, Memphis hired Justin Fuente, who had spent the previous five seasons as offensive coordinator at TCU. The first two years were a struggle as Fuente worked to revive a program that had gone 5-31 in the three seasons preced- ing his arrival. But his third year was a breakthrough, as the Tigers went 10-3, tied for the AAC championship and enjoyed a double-overtime victory over BYU in the Miami Beach Bowl. A finalist for the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year award, Fuente signed a contract extension in December 2014. A year later, after going 9-4 in his fourth season, he bolted for Virginia Tech. Fuente's exit may have been a disap- pointment, but Memphis made another astute hire when it signed Norvell in De- cember 2015. At age 34, he became the youngest head coach in the FBS when he left his position as offensive coordinator at Arizona State to take over the Tigers' program. It turned out to be a great move, as he went 18-8 in his first two seasons and won the first of his three consecutive AAC West Division titles, prompting the school to extend his initial five-year con- tract. The new pact paid him $2.6 million a year and made him the highest-paid coach in the Group of Five. But it wasn't enough to keep him in Memphis. The Tigers kept winning over the next two seasons, going 8-6 in 2018 to set the stage for this year's AAC champi- onship season. Those performances turned Norvell into an oft-cited name on the various lists of rising stars that ac- company the Power Five's annual head- hunting season, which typically begins in late November. This year's most enticing vacancy opened up when Florida State

• Cover