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Officials laud vetting process New coach 'direct and forthcoming' throughout PSU's background check | ames Franklin was vetted not only by the firm that does all of Penn State's background checks, but another firm, athletic director Dave Joyner said, that is "very, very thorough." Franklin met not only with the search committee, but with a group of university officials that included the president, a lawyer and the athletic integrity officer. Joyner said he and the search committee spoke with various contacts throughout college athletics and beyond, and he took calls from others who wanted to give their impressions and experiences with Franklin. Also important to the vetting process: Franklin's body language. Everyone who spoke about the process Saturday mentioned how even when answering tough questions, Franklin made eye contact. "He was very open, very honest," president Rod Erickson said, explaining that he could tell because Franklin's answers were "very consistent, very straightforward." Erickson added: "He looks you in the eye. And it corresponded to everything we had heard from all of the external sources." And it made Penn State confident that neither Franklin's talk-radio show crack about the attractiveness of assistant coaches' wives nor the ongoing investigation into an alleged gang rape by Vanderbilt football players would be a problem for the university as it continues to recover from the Sandusky scandal. "You can tell if people are honest with you," Joyner said. "You can tell if they're willing to look you in the eye and own up to something. The radio thing, that was not the best thing to do at all. He certainly understands that. That's not the person he is inside. It may have come J POWER TRIO Joyner, Franklin and Erickson pose following Franklin's introductory news conference. Tim Owen out the wrong way, but it's not the person he is inside. "When you look someone in the eye and have conversations with them, then with multiple people you talk to – not just athletic directors, but other people – every time you get a reaffirmation that your instinct was correct, that makes the odds on everything being accurate very high." Joyner said that he began background interviews on potential candidates before the interview process; permission isn't needed for all background checks. (He refused to give names of other candidates or even the number of candidates in- terviewed.) The pace was grueling, he said: "We did probably a month's worth of work in nine days." And the stakes were high. "In a typical interview process, if you interview somebody, you ask questions, they tell you answers, and that's pretty much it – you either believe them or don't believe them," said Frank Guadagnino, an outside attorney with Reed Smith who assists in the office of Penn State's general counsel. This interview process, however, was not quite typical. That was obvious from the makeup of the Penn State group that traveled to

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