We've heard the same about Franklin, for what it's worth. It may or may not be true, or may just be wishful thinking, but it doesn't appear to hamper him much.
For those keeping score, WPIAL Recruiting
- Thread starter pittmeister
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I've seen snippets of some of Franklin's press conferences and interactions with the media. If he did some of those things here, the local media would hold a grudge forever.
All I'm reading is a bunch of deflection. Kyle McCord was ranked 80th in the portal. That's like playoff-contender status. DJU (Florida State) was 79. Dillon Gabriel (Oregon) was 77. The Steelers first round draft pick was 101. I guarantee Nebraska was far from his only offer. I guarantee, if given the choice and the money was the same, Pitt would have chosen him over Holstein 100 times out of 100. I only mentioned Nebraska because there is an objective quote stating they offered twice the money Syracuse did.
But yeah, yeah. Aww shucks. Oh well. Let's just all blame everything under the sun except for the CEO of the program itself.
If he wins, it doesn't matter. Cowher was not well-liked by the media, either.
I'm not defending him one bit. If it were up to me, he'd have been gone a while ago. I'm merely saying that his job is even more difficult today than it was 5 years ago.
As we've been seeing more and more, you need a face of the program who energizes those associated with it these days. Get the Jimmies and Joes into the fold and let the coordinators do their thing with them. Dave Clawson is a fantastic coach whose talents are completely meaningless in the NIL era. You either find a coach who can land talent, or you can keep your standoffish "X's and O's" guy and suck.
I'm not sure what Pitt is paying its football team right now. But if, for example, it's $7.5M then I'd rather have a charlatan who can increase that figure to $10M than a "solid coach" who doesn't have enough talent to do much with.
Capel is the bigger putz, if any money needs to be spent to jettison a coach it should be directed his way
Capel is definitely worse. But both are way overcompensated. Capel, for the results he has produced, will have ended up being at Pitt for an unprecedented amount of time. Like I'm thinking he'll be here for about 9 years and have one NCAAT appearance... which required a play-in game.
Narduzzi I probably consider slightly above average as a coach. Not nearly good enough to warrant the amount of years/money we'll have given him in the end, though.
Between these two contracts and Tomlin, this town has jumped the shark with its stability shtick. Old-school Pixburgh, baby! The StEeEeEeL City! More like the Steal City nowadays, as just about every coach in this town has been shaking his employer down.
He's no different then any other HC. He's a big deal to a lot of people in PA and surround area because he's the HC of PSU. Bill O'Brien held the same aura when he walked through my HS building too. The difference between Bill and JF is that Bill never asked if anyone in the building wants to get their picture taken with him.
I would say on a per capita basis the Mon Valley still does pretty well.
Woody High, Clairton, Steel Valley, McKeesport, Thomas Jefferson, EF, Belle Vernon, etc. still do decent job of putting D1 guys out there.
I'd like to see some stats on where the Central D1 recruits were all from. That way I can know if it's attributable to proximity to a nuclear river, as all these schools + Aliquippa would fit that bill. Teenage Mutant Ninja WPIAL D1 Recruits, indeed.
Yea, but Franklin gets a pass because he’s a proven winner. He HAD to be a proven winner just to land the PSU job. And once ge got it, he had to win even more just to keep it. Hence the long leash when it comes to the media.
Narduzzi is not a proven winner, has not shown the ability to take a program to new heights, but runs his mouth a lot. That’s a recipe for getting crucified in sports media.
Pedd State has won 33.9% of their games against ranked opponents since 2003. Pitt has won 28.9%. So you win 4% more against teams with a pulse, yet spend, what 3-5 times more on football? Plus, all the raping and coverups.
Franklin is a very good recruiter and a better salesman than Duzz, no doubt about that. That said, Vandy significantly changed their modus operandi when it came to recruiting back then across the board. Being a private school, they used "Opportunity Vanderbilt" to funnel thousands of dollars to Vandy football players back in the day. Tim Corbin built his baseball empire off it & took Franklin under his wing.
Truthfully, Franklin took a dead end job, and Tim Corbin made Jimmy Franks a hot commodity.
‘We just connected’: The unlikely friendship of Tim Corbin and James Franklin
Franklin sought out Corbin upon his arrival at Vanderbilt to "peek behind the curtain of an elite organization in college athletics."
www.nytimes.com
One thing I’ll give Franklin slight credit on is I’ve never seen him film one of these mega cringe videos with a recruit where they’re jumping in a pool or mean mugging the camera. Some of the crap these guys do is beyond embarrassing.Franklin is a very good recruiter and a better salesman than Duzz, no doubt about that. That said, Vandy significantly changed their modus operandi when it came to recruiting back then across the board. Being a private school, they used "Opportunity Vanderbilt" to funnel thousands of dollars to Vandy football players back in the day. Tim Corbin built his baseball empire off it & took Franklin under his wing.
Truthfully, Franklin took a dead end job, and Tim Corbin made Jimmy Franks a hot commodity.
‘We just connected’: The unlikely friendship of Tim Corbin and James Franklin
Franklin sought out Corbin upon his arrival at Vanderbilt to "peek behind the curtain of an elite organization in college athletics."
Lol. The name Brian Kelly instantly comes to mind here.
I don't keep up with that sort of thing to know a lot about it. However, I know Kelly has stooped to that level a few times, and bad enough that it makes it to several different blogs & websites. I wasn't aware he had that kind of cringe in him before he arrived at LSU and tried to pull of that fake southern accent, or whatever the hell that was.
Franklin is a great recruiter but he’s not a game day coach. And even the nit fans will tell you thatFranklin is a very good recruiter and a better salesman than Duzz, no doubt about that. That said, Vandy significantly changed their modus operandi when it came to recruiting back then across the board. Being a private school, they used "Opportunity Vanderbilt" to funnel thousands of dollars to Vandy football players back in the day. Tim Corbin built his baseball empire off it & took Franklin under his wing.
Truthfully, Franklin took a dead end job, and Tim Corbin made Jimmy Franks a hot commodity.
‘We just connected’: The unlikely friendship of Tim Corbin and James Franklin
Franklin sought out Corbin upon his arrival at Vanderbilt to "peek behind the curtain of an elite organization in college athletics."
He's a mediocre game-day guy by any standard, but now teams with unlimited resources all have a large group of analysts that are all wearing headsets. I would imagine that they are a big help.
And Vanderbilt fans will tell you differently.
His on field performance has pretty much fell right in line with his talent at PSU. For a supposedly great recruiter, he seems to never field a roster as talented as tOSU or Michigan in the Harbaugh era. I'm not even sure he's signed a Top 5 class at PSU. How can you be considered a great recruiter and not sign a single Top 5 class in a decade? ...Or maybe he is a great recruiter, but it's just really hard to sign elite recruiting classes at PSU. Which is it? Because both can't be true.
I never said he had a top 5 class. However, they recruit a lot 4&5 stars. With the talent they have Franklin doesn’t win the big games and partly because he’s not a good game coach.
If both can’t be true then their recruiting is vastly overrated.
You can't disregard the talent disparity, though. Ohio State is always loaded, Michigan usually is. He's an average coach. It would take a seriously above average coach to overcome the talent gap. He recruits well, but he's recruiting against behemoths. Those schools have advantages that he will never be able to overcome.
We'll see what happens this year, but overall they are a 9-10 win program that will be in the playoffs most years with no real chance of winning. It's not the worst thing in the world.
We'll see what happens this year, but overall they are a 9-10 win program that will be in the playoffs most years with no real chance of winning. It's not the worst thing in the world.
He sure as hell isn't bad. And if you start to narrow the definition of "big game" to games with championship implications where his opponent has superior talent, then yeah, he's not very good in the big games.
How is their recruiting overrated? Franklin's recruiting at PSU has been good if the goal is to be a perennial Top 20 type program. However, if the goal is for the football program to be taken seriously as a title contender, then Franklin's recruiting is an abject failure.
Here's the year of the class, class ranking, and average star rating since Jimmy Franks has been at PSU using Rivals as the source.
2014 24 3.20
2015 15 3.44
2016 21 3.25
2017 12 3.57
2018 5 3.83
2019 11 3.52
2020 15 3.48
2021 25 3.24
2022 7 3.64
2023 16 3.52
2024 16 3.58
2025 16 3.43
I'm going to be open-minded going forward. I think these rankings mean a whole lot less than in the past because of the portal. So, I'm not going to make any predictions about what Franklin will or won't accomplish at PSU going forward. But in the pre-NIL/Portal era, these type of classes will never translate to an elite program. If a program desires to legitimately compete for national titles, recruiting classes like this are simply unacceptable.
I agree that with the portal recruiting has been somewhat diminished. If going forward the type of recruiting classes that PSU typically have you’re saying that this doesn’t add up to championship caliber teams, then Franklin at best is an average coach.
so now that we landed some wpial recruits. are you guys going to go back to complaining about how bad the wpial is now that you cant complain we dont get any?
asking for a friend.
asking for a friend.
I don’t think the portal is going to help PSU much, because it doesn’t offer what holds them back year after year.
That is usually the trenches and a lack of high end talent.
In ‘25 they signed one trench player with a 94+ rating.
In 2024 they signed two trench players with a .94+ rating.
In 23 they signed two with a 94+ rating.
Etc.
etc.
None of these guys were 5*. None were on the DL. All were located in the Mid-Atlantic and NE footprint.
UGA’s 2025 class had 5 94+ rated trench players, 3 of them were 5*.
Penn State just doesn’t have enough high end OL/DL talent around it at the HS level to consistently field the type of teams you need to field to compete with the monster teams. And the further they go out to recruit, the more diminishing returns they get. They struggle getting that type of talent from Texas or the south.
And you can’t make up for that gap in the portal. The players just aren’t there to do it.
That is usually the trenches and a lack of high end talent.
In ‘25 they signed one trench player with a 94+ rating.
In 2024 they signed two trench players with a .94+ rating.
In 23 they signed two with a 94+ rating.
Etc.
etc.
None of these guys were 5*. None were on the DL. All were located in the Mid-Atlantic and NE footprint.
UGA’s 2025 class had 5 94+ rated trench players, 3 of them were 5*.
Penn State just doesn’t have enough high end OL/DL talent around it at the HS level to consistently field the type of teams you need to field to compete with the monster teams. And the further they go out to recruit, the more diminishing returns they get. They struggle getting that type of talent from Texas or the south.
And you can’t make up for that gap in the portal. The players just aren’t there to do it.
I have never complained about Pitt not getting local players. I said that if you’re in a southern conference then to compete you need southern players.
The one philosophy of recruiting was to get your linemen from the WPIAL and the speed players from the south.
One other factor in local recruiting sometimes kids just want to get out of W. Pa. and way from home.
i agree with this 100%.
regarding recruiting geographically, i think we do ok in maryland, got a few from virginia area a few years back. we obviously go after the GA and florida recruits but we always did..
even though i think we just landed a kid from St Ignatius, i dont see us doing much in ohio. which is odd because i thought Narduzzi would dominate ohio but it never panned out.
He wins despite himself. He has had a decent staff over the years plus good players. Plus a couple of nit fans who are season ticket holders I’ve said this to me since Franklin’s been the coach. This includes my son, my brother, my nephew and my attorney who are all PSU graduates and die hard nits.
Do you think I don’t hear all the nit bullshit. For years my brother, up to the time he passed 3 years ago, had the tickets from the 48-14 debacle in his car. Every time I was in his car he pulled those tickets out to remind me.
As time goes by, Franklin's negatives regarding his gameday coaching will diminish. Analysts will be in his headset telling him what to do during games, and he is by all accounts more of a CEO/cheerleader than an actual on-field coach anyhow. Perhaps that is the perfect situation for him. Clearly he is a good salesman, and they've got NIL moving in the right direction, apparently, since most of their draft-eligible kids are returning. Hire a bunch of experienced guys who just want to coach at the ends of their careers and don't want hassle, let them work with the on-field staff, and let them advise the CEO during the actual games. It could work. Bama has been doing this for a long time. Hell, the guys that run the big AI companies aren't doing the coding themselves.
Both.
Seriously. I don't think it is both out of line and untrue that says the WPIAL talent is the worst as it has ever been, yet the most successful WPIAL players over the past two decades came through Pitt.
JF had back to back 9 win seasons at Vanderbilt. I don't think he really needs analysts to "tell him what to do." He's worked his way up the ladder and had success every step of the way.
He's a very good coach at a program where he can win a lot of games and get double digit wins about every other year. He's not elite & neither is the program that employs him.
I mean here is the point. The last Western Pa HS football player drafted in Rd 1 was Aaron Donald. And he's retired.
The most successful NFL players from Western PA that graduated college over the last 20 years are:
Revis
AD
James Connor (McDowell was in the WPIAL then)
Tyler Boyd.
All came to the NFL through Pitt.
I hate to do this, but if board legend Robert Foster came to Pitt, did his career turn out differently and he is on the list?
Hey, better topic than some of the crap on the locker room.
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