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FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH n 2013 Vanderbilt fought its way out of a 13-point sec- ond-half hole against Georgia, scoring three times in the fourth quarter for a 31-27 victory. The Bulldogs were ranked 15th in the country at the time, while Vanderbilt was nowhere near the Top 25 a6er going 3-3 in the 4rst half of the season. Given the chasm that had separated the two programs for decades, a lot of people considered it a big upset, probably the biggest of James Franklin's head coaching career. The Com- modores hadn't beaten Georgia since 2006 and hadn't beaten them in Nashville since 1991. But Franklin, who was in his third season at Vanderbilt, didn't see it that way. To him, the victory didn't feel all that di5erent from every other game he'd coached since arriving at the school in 2011. "We've had significant wins and signature wins from day one," he said in the postgame news conference. "When you come in and take over a program that won four games in two years, UConn was a signature win, Presbyterian was a signa- ture win. We never bought into [the suggestion that some games are more significant]. We just believe that if you keep working hard and you keep a great attitude Sunday through Friday, the Saturdays will start to take care of themselves. If the fans and the media want to get excited about it, it's awe- some. But seriously, we don't look at it like that. I mean that." It's now been three years since Vanderbilt beat Georgia, and much has changed for Franklin. The biggest of those changes has been his employer, and his move to Penn State has brought a corresponding uptick in the expectations that he's dealing with as a head coach. Consider, for example, that 58-0 squeaker over Presbyterian in 2012, the one that prompted Blue Hose coach Harold Nichols to note, "We were outplayed to a certain degree." It might have quali4ed as a signature vic- tory for a Vanderbilt program that had managed only two win- ning seasons in 35 years prior to Franklin's arrival. But at Penn State, which has won more games than all but seven Football Bowl Subdivision schools, victories over overmatched pro- grams are expected. Victories over comparable opponents are expected, too, along with the occasional upset of a superior opponent. Heading into Penn State's Big Ten opener against Michigan, the Nittany Lions weren't having much luck pulling o5 those kinds of upsets. They had played 4ve ranked teams since 2014 and lost to all of them. They had also lost to seven unranked teams during that same span. To some people, that's reason enough to question Franklin's coaching acumen. Visit your social media platform of choice a6er a Nittany Lion loss and you're guaranteed to 4nd a stream of complaints – not just about whatever happened to go wrong on game day but about the overall state of the program. I Its roster is long on freshmen and light on seniors, but at places like PSU, hopes are always high FOOTBALL 2016

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