College football head coach rankings: Dabo or Saban? Who is the best young coach?
By Dante Pryor
- Career Record (10 years): 80-38
- Conference Titles: 1
- National Titles: 0
If you need to know how good Penn State head coach James Franklin is, he won nine games two seasons in a row while the head coach at Vanderbilt. You have to go all the way back to Dan McGugin, who had three consecutive eight-win seasons from 1926-1928.
Great college football coaches do two things well, recruit and hire great coaches. Franklin does both as well as any coaches in the country. He’s been able to recruit at a high level despite competing with Ohio State on the recruiting trail.
Despite the stiff competition on the trail, Franklin and his staff are consistently in the top 15 and brought in a top-10 class. He’s led a staff that has been excellent at developing talent.
They’ve also brought in big-time talents like Saquon Barkley and Micah Parsons.
As far as hiring coordinators and coaches, there are few coaches better than Franklin. While at Vanderbilt, Josh Gattis, Bob Shoop, John Donovan and Ricky Rahne were all on his staff.
When he took over at Penn State, Joe Moorhead, Joe Brady and Jim Haslett were on his staff. That is in addition to Bob Shoop and John Donovan following Franklin to Penn State.
Joe Moorhead went on to become the head coach at Mississippi State and currently serves as the offensive coordinator at Oregon. We know what Brady did at LSU with Joe Burrow in 2019 and seeks to do the same thing in the NFL with the Carolina Panthers.
If there’s anything we’ve seen with Franklin through the years is his ability to execute his vision. He knew what and how he wanted Vanderbilt to look. He’s done the same at Penn State.
He’s dominated recruiting in the state of Pennsylvania and has kept some of the best recruits in-state. He’s identified and targeted “his kind” when recruiting out of state.
He’s developed players that might miss a measurable — KJ Hamler’s only 5-foot-8 and Trace McSorely is barely 6-feet — but have other tangible qualities. The question for Franklin is, has he hit the ceiling at Penn State?