Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1541276
W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M W hen he was putting together his first coaching staff at Penn State back in January 2014, James Franklin knew that he needed to build a bridge to the program's illustrious past. He was getting set to bring nearly all of his assistants from Vanderbilt with him to State College, and while PSU supporters were predisposed to approve of the newcomers, they would surely like them even more if there were a familiar face in the crowd. The obvious way to create that con- nection was to hire a Penn State football alum for the final vacancy on a staff that was otherwise stocked with Commodores. It couldn't be just anyone, though. It had to be someone who could make the Nittany Lions better — as a teacher of the game, as a re- cruiter and as the kind of leader who could take charge of any room in which he might find himself. Fortunately for the Lions, Franklin knew of just such a coach. Terry Smith had starred for Penn State as a member of its wide receiver corps in the waning years of the program's independent era and had gotten into coaching after his professional playing career ended in the mid-1990s. Frank- lin first crossed paths with Smith when he was recruiting at Gateway High in Monroeville, Pa., where the former Nit- A 1991 Penn State graduate, Smith is the only mem- ber of James Franklin's original PSU coaching staff who is still with the program. PHOTO BY MARK SELDERS/PENN STATE ATHLETICS TRUE TRUE BLUE BLUE Interim coach Terry Smith steers his alma mater through a turbulent season M AT T H E R B | M AT T. H E R B @ O N 3 . C O M 2 0 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 5