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P enn State hasn't hired many head football coaches in the past half- century, but it's done pretty well on the rare occasions when it has had to 5nd someone new to lead the school's 6agship athletic program. I truly believe Joe Paterno was the right man in the right place at the right time for Penn State. He turned an agri- cultural college in rural central Pennsyl- vania into a college football juggernaut, and in so doing helped shape the univer- sity into one of the country's most pres- tigious public institutions. He under- stood the important role that college sports can play in keeping alumni en- gaged and in calling attention to aca- demic successes. Paterno's successor, Bill O'Brien, was the perfect person to lead the program during a period of crisis. He was focused and knew what had to be done to keep Penn State from falling apart in the af- termath of the Sandusky scandal. He performed the public outreach that is a necessary part of the job, but his pri- mary role was as a serious, detail-ori- ented teacher of the game. As it turned out, a number of very good prospects wanted to play for that kind of a coach. But O'Brien is gone, and the job has now passed to James Franklin. From what I've seen of him during his 5rst 5ve months on the job, I believe he is the right person to help Penn State take the next step toward a stable and successful future. While O'Brien was clearly most com- fortable in his on-5eld role, Franklin has embraced the more public aspects of the job. More than just a football coach, he wants to be an ambassador for Penn State. He has embraced every facet of the Nittany Lions' remarkable football her- itage and has done so with a focus and passion I haven't seen at Penn State since Paterno turned the Lions into one of the country's premier Division I programs. Between 1968 and 1994, Paterno's teams won two national championships and posted 5ve undefeated seasons. In his 46 seasons, he won 409 games. Those num- bers are important, but just as important is the fact that he won those games by developing true student-athletes. Franklin understands this. His stated mission is to give his players the best college experience they can receive – on the 5eld and in the classroom. O'Brien had no choice but to sell the program as an avenue to the NFL. That approach played a role in helping Penn State land blue-chip prospects such as Christian Hackenberg despite the sanc- tions the NCAA handed down in 2012. Franklin's pitch to recruits is di7erent. It's been broadened out in a way that calls to mind the approach Paterno took during his early years as head coach. "The NFL is great, and we want that as an opportunity for our guys," he said dur- ing a Coaches Caravan stop in King of Prussia, Pa. "But it's not always the teams that send the most players to the NFL [that succeed]. It's the best college teams. We want to have a nice balance of both. "We want guys to be able to go on and continue to play, but we also want to have the best college team. We don't want to have the best NFL team. We want to have the best college team." In other words, a8er Penn State's postseason ban ends, Franklin wants it to once again reach for the stars. He wants to win Big Ten titles. He wants to qualify for the NCAA playo7s. And con- sidering the passion he has shown so far, it seems quite clear he wants to win a national championship. If a player has NFL potential, Franklin wants Penn State to give him the means to reach that goal. But that will never be his primary objective as head coach. It isn't Nick Saban's main objective at Ala- bama, nor was it Paterno's objective during his tenure at Penn State. The way to sustain success over a long period of time is not just to recruit play- ers with NFL potential but to incorpo- rate that talent into a program that pro- vides the complete college football ex- perience. That's what Franklin wants to help create at Penn State. In many re- spects, it echoes what Paterno did when he led the program to national promi- nence in the late 1960s. The passion that Franklin has brought to Penn State's recruiting e7orts calls to mind the approach Paterno took when he became head coach in 1966. What's more, Franklin has taken the ideas and energy that characterized much of the Paterno era and ramped them up to a level that meets the needs of a 21st cen- tury team that aspires to compete for championships. Franklin has talked o8en about the need to build good relationships throughout the Northeast, and that's exactly what Paterno did as head coach. One of his shrewdest moves was to lend his full support to the Big 33 program. He made Penn State's football facilities available to the Big 33 Coaches Com- mittee and met regularly with high school coaches in Pennsylvania and bordering states. Paterno understood that the goodwill he built up in that community would help him connect with some of the Keystone State's best prospects. With the success the program experi- enced and the relationships Paterno es- tablished with high school coaches up and down the East Coast, he created an Franklin's approach to recruiting could pay big dividends P H I L 'S C O R N E R

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