Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1503568
A U G U S T 2 0 2 3 2 7 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / T H E B I G P I C T U R E / / / / / / / of NIL. We can't lose players on our cur- rent roster because of NIL. That's what people don't understand. It's retention of your current roster, and then it's also a matter of attracting recruits. BWI: Are you concerned about the in- creasing prevalence of poaching? FRANKLIN: That's been a concern since this got started. Yesterday I sent a message to Pat Kraft, [football chief of staff] Kevin Threlkel and Vinnie [James, deputy athletics director for internal operations] about a player in our program who was offered by multiple schools. And it's not just one. We've had a ton of these. We're very concerned about that and aware of it. And I think that's a lot of programs' approach. Why recruit a high school kid when you can get a proven product from another university? BWI: How are you handling that in- ternally? FRANKLIN: You hope that you're having honest conversations so that guys will share this with you, and you can un- derstand what they and their families are going through. That's valuable in- formation for us to have as a program, to be aware of, and to use to educate our people. I think it's critical that our players and their parents are willing to share this information. Those same stories are things that we need to use to motivate our fans, our do- nors and the administration. What I don't want is for it to take losing a great player to get everybody to say, "Damn, this is real." You don't want to have to go through that painful experience to grow from it. I've got no problem turning people in, but most people aren't willing to talk. I can't just publicly go off if there's no proof or nobody is willing to talk to the NCAA about it. Let's say you're offering me $100,000 to come to your school. A lot of people are going to say, "I have a hard time going to the NCAA and turning in this person who's trying to help me and my family." BWI: What do you want the Big Ten to look like with its impending changes? FRANKLIN: What does the Big Ten want? Does the Big Ten want to put their teams in the best position to win national championships? The Big Ten historically has not done that. The SEC has been built and every decision has been based on, how do we win national champion- ships? And not only that, but how do we get multiple teams into the playoff? The Big Ten has been all about, how do we sell our media package? How do we sign the biggest TV deal? Those two things don't align. They're not complementary. Is the Big Ten still going to follow this model of "How do we sign the biggest TV check?" Or is it based on competition? It's kind of like, what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Does signing the con- tract on the front end create the revenue? Or does winning a ton of national cham- pionships and having multiple teams in the playoff equate to the money? If you look at it, the SEC took a very different approach, with its conference schedule being eight games. Probably the most detrimental decision the Big Ten ever made was going to nine games. The SEC took a different approach and wins national championships. And more importantly, it has multiple teams in the playoff, more than anybody else. BWI: Two new projects were just ap- proved — the training table at the Green- berg Indoor Sports Complex and the prac- tice bubble next to Jeffrey Field. How do those projects help the football program? FRANKLIN: Having a training table for all athletes is going to have a direct translation to success on the field for the entire athletic department. You can lift as many weights as you want. If you're not fueling your athletes properly, then you're not going to get the results you want. Having part of our football building given to the athletic department to build this for all sports is, I think, going to be a big win, and I know specifically for foot- ball it's going to be huge. The bubble will also be huge, because there are times in the winter when Holuba Hall is packed from 6 in the morning till 11 p.m. [The new multisport bubble] is going to allow Holuba to become a football-only facility. It's going to allow our guys to run, throw and do seven-on- sevens whenever they want. There have been times in the past when our guys wanted to throw, and the facility wasn't available. That's going to be really valuable when it comes to the passing game and year- round development. Penn State football has paid for the up- keep of that facility, but all 31 sports have used it. You can imagine the wear and tear of all those sports in there, whether it's lacrosse balls hammering off the walls or golf balls, football, soccer, whatever it is. That's an impact, too. BWI: Are you happy to see a direction settled upon for Beaver Stadium? FRANKLIN: I've always been more focused on the facilities that we use es- sentially 365 days a year rather than seven. But I understand the impact of Beaver Stadium on the state of Pennsylvania and on this community. It will be redone in a way that's going to allow us to create revenue year-round, whether that's concerts or other sport- ing events in there. The ability to create revenue for the athletic department and for Penn State football is really valuable. It's not just that Beaver Stadium is out of date and out of code. It's that structur- ally, if you don't do it soon, the choice is going to be taken out of your hands. We don't have a solution like a lot of schools where you can say, "OK, we're at Northwestern, we're going to go play at the Bears' stadium for a couple of years while we're redoing our stadium." We don't have that option, so we have to get it right. ■ "Probably the most detrimental decision the Big Ten ever made was going to nine games. The SEC took a different approach and wins national championships." F R A N K L I N