Penn State University is all in on James Franklin
Penn State University is fully committed to their head coach. According to Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports, Franklin has signed a 6-year deal worth an average of $5.8 million per year. The total value of the contract is $34.8 million.
Penn State offered Franklin the job back in January of 2014 after three very successful seasons at Vanderbilt. He helped the Commodores get back into the AP Top 25 in two of the three years he was there. Before Franklin, the only other team from Vanderbilt that had accomplished such a task was the 1948 squad.
While Franklin had a rough first two years at Penn State, the administration stuck behind him. They were right. Franklin won the AP Big Ten Coach of the Year, Dave McLain Big Ten Coach of the Year, Woody Hayes National Coach of the Year, and the Sporting News National Coach of the Year awards all in 2016. The team is betting he can duplicate those results in 2017.
According to USA Today, the deal would make Franklin the 4th highest paid coach in the NCAA, according to 2016 salaries. According to Feldman, this places three of the top six highest paid coaches in the NCAA in the Big Ten East.
After narrowly missing out on the 2016 NCAA Playoffs, the Penn State Board of Trustees’ Committee on Compensation decided to go forward with Franklin for the foreseeable future.
The deal will help keep Franklin at Penn State until at least 2022, but details of the contract have not been released. This means it is possible for Franklin to be under contract past 2022.
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Another aspect of Franklin’s ability that persuaded Penn State to extend his contract is his recruiting skills. The coach has been widely considered to have brought in top-25 recruiting classes since he began. 247Sports has Penn State in the top 20 from 2015 to 2018.