Btw.. I don't want to turn this thread into a James Franklin bashing free-for-all and I'm not sure if I've posted this elsewhere on this forum previously, but here's an interesting nugget on Franklin..
Last season I was watching Syracuse vs. Louisville at a bar here in Arlington, VA. Given the way the season was starting to unfold w/ injuries and such, I decided it'd be best to stand a few yards away from my friends watching their games (PSU and VT grads). Penn St was not playing that day. Anyway, a random walks up and stands by me, sees my shirt and starts talking to me about Syracuse and the game. At first, annoyed because I have some random talking to me, while frustratingly watching Ben Lewis drop a TD (the first of 2 that day that no doubt should have been caught by Lewis), I continued making small talk with the guy. He and I discussed playing D3 football as we were both ex-players, etc. Then I asked him what he does, and this is where the conversation, and my attitude towards the guy, took on a very different tune.
To summarize the conversation and its relevancy... The guy was a graduate assistant on the Penn State football staff. He was a holdover grad assistant from the Bill O'Brien staff and his father was a former D1A football coach. He then went on to tell me that starting the fall after James Franklin's first recruiting class, Franklin decided (after the first fall practice) that he wanted the premium lockers at the front of the locker room to be designated for the freshman he had just recruited. He wanted all the incumbents to be displaced elsewhere. Typically under B.O'B. and historically, I guess these lockers were assigned to Seniors, whether on scholarship or walk-ons, as an honor. Franklin I guess even took it further in that he demanded that all the walkon's not to receive formal lockers at all. So Franklin implemented his locker room changes before the second fall practice. At the end of the third fall practice, the Juniors/Sophomores/Redshirt Freshman all banded together and approached Franklin to voice their disgust at the change. Further, he said that the players really were disgusted, and voiced as much to Franklin, about his treatment of walkon's (don't forget PSU was just coming off their period of sanctions, so they had a good number of walkon's to fill out their 85 man roster). He described it as being similar to the movie Rudy when all the players ask for Rudy to dress in their place. Anyway, he said Franklin's response to the players was, "Let the players decide who gets the premium lockers and we'll make sure the walkon's get treated more fairly and are given lockers, however, I don't want the walkon's in the premium lockers."
We bought each other drinks and parted nicely. However, this graduate assistant vehemently disliked Coach Franklin. Several times he compared Franklin to Bill O'Brien and even his own father and every single time, it shed Franklin in a terrible light.