Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1541276
6 2 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 5 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M W hen athletics director Patrick Kraft fired James Franklin on Oct. 12, seven weeks before the end of college football's regular season, Penn State was all but assured of a pro- tracted search for its next head coach. At the time of Franklin's dismissal, nearly all of the serious candidates for the job were coaching elsewhere. A few former coaches were cited as potential fits, but the prospect of Urban Meyer or Nick Saban giving up comfortable jobs in media for the chance to manage a locker room full of teenage million- aires seemed optimistic if not outright delusional. The more realistic scenario had Penn State waiting for the end of the regular season to announce its hire, and potentially much later if the choice happened to be in the midst of a deep College Football Playoff run. With the early signing period for the 2026 recruiting class set for Dec. 3-5 and the transfer portal slated to open for two weeks beginning Jan. 2, Penn State finds itself trying to reconcile conflict- ing imperatives. It needs a coach, and it doesn't want to settle. However, it also needs to field a competitive team next fall, and its upcoming graduation losses, coupled with the potential disintegra- tion of the 2026 recruiting class and the need for decisive action when the portal opens, mean that time won't be on the Nittany Lions' side when the calendar page flips to December. It's a different scenario than the one that Penn State faced the last time it made a midseason coaching change. On Nov. 9, 2011, with the Sandusky scandal making headlines across the country, the university's board of trustees fired Joe Paterno. Defensive coordinator Tom Bradley was named interim coach, and the team was forced to muddle through its three remaining regular-season games not knowing what the program's long-term future held. At the time, there were too many variables in play for anyone to gauge how long a coaching search might take. Would Bradley, Paterno's heir appar- ent prior to the scandal, be considered for the full-time job? Were any of the big names that had long been floated as good fits for PSU — program alums Mike Munchak and Al Golden topped the list — be interested in returning to State College? Would the threat of potential NCAA sanctions dissuade the most at- tractive candidates from considering the Nittany Lions? Was the university equipped to do a rigorous search after its president and athletics director had both been swept up in the scandal along with Paterno? And finally, how would Penn State, which hadn't undertaken a real When Bill O'Brien was introduced as Joe Paterno's successor on Jan. 7, 2012, it was his first head coaching job at any level of football. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL LONG STORY SHORT This year's coaching search isn't the first in which PSU has taken its time to find the right man for the job M AT T H E R B | M AT T. H E R B @ O N 3 . C O M