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this year for the success that we've had and for the change. This is the time of the year where you see a lot of coaches' movement. Joe Moorhead's name came up a cou- ple times. Do you expect to keep your staff together? I think that's a compliment. Whenever you have assistant coaches being ap- proached and people trying to hire your staff, that means that you're doing something right, and they want to get a piece of it. I think we've had three coaches approached, three separate coaches approached for multiple head coaching jobs. I'm hoping that we're going to be able to keep the staff to- gether as long as we possibly can, but they're talented guys and guys who are going to leave at some point for head coaching opportunities. We want that for them, but we want to try to keep the staff together as long as we possibly can. So for me right now, what I'm con- cerned about is doing everything in my power and our power here at Penn State to put all the things into place to con- tinue to build on what we're doing right now. That's the coaches, keeping our coaches together for as long as we pos- sibly can, [with] contracts and support- ing them the best we possibly can, and then all the other things that we need to do. We've done a lot of studies on what programs across the country are doing to compete at this level, and then we're trying to put as many of those things in position as possible so we can capitalize on this momentum we have right now. Penn State and USC have been two of the hottest teams in the nation. What are some of the challenges that come with maintaining your mo- mentum when both of you have been dependent on the fact that you've only had to wait six days to play your next game? Well, I haven't studied their injury is- sues as much as ours at this point, but from our perspective, I know it's a posi- tive. We were getting really thin at some positions as the year went on, had over- come some stuff early on, but just al- lowing these guys some down time physically to get their bodies back, emotionally to get their juice back and their spirits back [has been positive]. The confidence is there, and right now classes are going to be done, so it's going to be football. There are only cer- tain times of the year where it's football only, and we don't get that in camp. A lot of schools get that in camp. Our guys go to class. I think we only have one week where we're not taking class dur- ing summer camp. I think our guys are looking forward to it. I look at it as a positive. Again, it's time off to focus just on football. We've got a really good plan where we're not going to be out at practice too long. We want to keep them fresh, start to kind of introduce USC slowly, and then go full- bore ahead. Like I said, over [this coaching staff's] six years together, we've had a good amount of success [in terms] of getting better as the year has gone on. In the entirety of the six years we've been to- gether, we've done a pretty good job of that. That [also involves] Tim Bream and his staff, the trainers. We meet with them every morning at 7 a.m., and same thing with our strength staff, having a plan to make sure that we are peaking at the right time physically, emotionally, all those things, peaking at the right time for the game. Obviously, where they have a huge ad- vantage is that it's a home game for them. We have to travel out there. We have to deal with time changes and all those types of things, and that's a fac- tor, and all those things have to factor into our planning and how we approach it. You've talked about being positive. For you as a coach, you may have pic- tured success, but now it's happened. Has it changed you at all? I don't think it's changed my staff, I don't think it's changed me. I'm fairly stubborn, but I'm stubborn because we've done a lot of homework and we've done a lot of research, and we've had a lot of evidence that our plan works and that we spend a lot of time in the off- season taking our plan each year and tweaking it and modifying it but never going away from the core of who we are. I think you guys have seen that. My ap- proach each week coming in here, my approach at practice, my approach with the guys, my approach with recruiting, it's something over 22 years that we've developed that we feel strongly in. Ob- viously, the success helps, but it's not like this is the first time we've had suc- cess. We were fortunate to come up with a plan early on that worked, and then obviously you've got to modify those plans based on each unique situa- tion that you're in and each university or school or community you're in. And we've done that. I think it probably reinforces what you already believe and what you already think, so I wouldn't necessarily say it changes it, but it reinforces that. And then I think the other thing that's really, really important is that we have to keep the players grounded, because if you listen to too much of the criticism or too much of the praise, both of those things are going to have a very negative effect on you personally and as a group and as a team. And it's the same thing with our coaches. Fortunately for me, I have a group of coaches who have lot of trust in each other. We have a lot of belief in each other, and we care about each other, and we are willing to have very honest conversations with each other. A lot of times, the head coach is willing to have those conversations with the as- sistants, but it hasn't created an envi- ronment where the assistants are comfortable having that conversation with the head coach. So I get beat up by my staff no differ- ent than they get beat up. We're pretty aggressive with each other. We attack each other. We've got thick skin. And then the best decision I ever made is I married Funmilayo Franklin, and she's not afraid to give me her opinion on a wide range of subjects to keep all of us grounded. I think that's really, really, re- ally important. So yeah, we're not going to change. Never are. I'm an East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, kid who got his dream, his opportunity to come back home and build this program, and we've still got a long ways to go, but we're taking steps in the right direction. D E C E M B E R   3 0 ,   2 0 1 6 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 15

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