Fansided

James Franklin puts Penn State on verge of shocking upset: Best memes and tweets

Penn State got pushed around and James Franklin committed clock management sins as UCLA took a 20-point halftime lead over the Nittany Lions.
ByAlicia de Artola|
Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin
Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin | James Lang-Imagn Images

James Franklin has always struggled to win the big game, as evidenced by last week's loss to Oregon. However, Penn State has been reliably capable of taking care of business against the little guys. And UCLA is most definitely a little guy these days. So imagine the surprise of the college football world when the Bruins jumped out to a 27-7 lead over the No. 7 team in the country.

The game went to halftime with UCLA in control, in part because of Franklin's horrific clock management in the final two minutes before the break. In a futile attempt to score only after running out the clock fully, the Nittany Lions set up a long Bruin field goal as time expired instead.

Franklin let OC Andy Kotelnicki call a series of runs looking to bleed clock instead of focusing on moving the chains. The head coach declined to call a time out as the clock ticked under 30 seconds and then Drew Allar took a sack on fourth-and-2, giving UCLA the ball with just a short distance to get into field goal range.

Social media was relentless in their criticism of the Penn State head coach.

Best reactions to Penn State's struggles against UCLA

James Franklin's clock management strikes

Penn State fans had preexisting frustrations with Franklins's clock management. So while there wasn't surprise, there was plenty of frustration.

James Franklin doesn't just lose the the big game?

Franklin and Penn State haven't lost to UCLA, so it's not locked in yet, but there were a million jokes playing on the Nittany Lions' trend of losing big games.

UCLA? Really?

The fact that it was UCLA doing the dominating threw most people for a loop. This is a winless Bruins squad who fired their head coach and parted ways with their OC. Jerry Neuheisal, a tight ends coach, took over in Deshaun Foster's absence and somehow got UCLA playing good football again.

'James Franklin is a fraud'

Right now, Penn State fans feel like they were sold a bill of good by Franklin that has not materialized.

James Franklin might not be welcome back in Happy Valley

it's not hard to find Penn State fans who want Franklin fired at this point.

Traveling across the country to play on the road isn't easy, even against a winless team. Still, a top 10 team like Penn State expects to play much better than we've seen on Saturday. A win will allow everyone to bleach this one from their minds and move on. But a loss? Well that would change things.

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