Perhaps the biggest question swirling around the Penn State Football program right now, especially in the wake of a 10-3 season that fell well short of expectations last year is this – Is Nittany Lions Head Coach James Franklin a national championship-caliber coach?
Even some of the most ardent Penn State supporters have their doubts.
But, former Penn State legend LaVar Arrington isn’t one of them.
“I’ll just say first and foremost,” Arrington told NittanyCentral during a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the program, and more. “Yes, [James Franklin] is the caliber of coach who can take a team to the big dance. He’s proven that.”
The Penn State Board of Trustees seemed to think so too when they inked Franklin to a 10-year contract extension three years ago that runs through the 2031 season.
Sure, Franklin has had four 11-win seasons and has brought the highest level of pride back to Happy Valley. But, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that he has come up pretty small in the biggest games of his 13-year tenure at Penn State.
As far as the Big Ten goes everybody knows what’s at stake before the season begins. For the Nittany Lions to sniff a national championship they would have to beat either Michigan or Ohio State, probably both every year, and play near-perfect football against all other competition.
There were big hopes last year for the Nits as they enjoyed the national attention and exposure of a top-ten team for the majority of the season but when all was said and done they endured the same result as they have for the past 38 seasons.
Believe it or not, but it’s been 13,738 days since Penn State stood all alone atop the collegiate football mountain laying claim to number one.
It was the Nittany Lions’ second national championship in four years and that number still remains their sum total of national championships won and both were won under the guise of their legendary coach, Joe Paterno.
Since that night of January 2, 1987, when the Nits upset the University of Miami 14-10 in the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, 39 National Championship trophies have been dolled out to 18 different universities, most of which can proudly call themselves legitimate football factories, 11 of them having won multiple titles in that time. Dating back to 1980, 13 programs have won multiple National Champions and the Nittany Lions sit proudly on that list:
Alabama 6
Miami 5
Georgia 3
Clemson 3
Florida 3
Florida State 3
Nebraska 3
LSU 3
Penn State 2
Oklahoma 2
Michigan 2
Ohio State 2
USC 2
The problem is that the Nits have been somewhat relevant but have only really sniffed a national championship once since.
The closest they came to winning it all was back in 1994, 31 years ago, when the Nittany Lions ran the table and made a legitimate case that they were once again the top team in America.
But, both the coaches poll and the Associated Press snubbed the Nits and went with the sentimental favorite that year, giving the nod to Tom Ozbourne and his undefeated Nebraska Cornhuskers. Penn State finished 2nd in the nation that year.
But soon after that debacle, the NCAA implemented the BCS (Bowl Championship Series), which pitted the “computer consensus” top two teams in a one-game bowl title game.
That failed experiment worked a little better than the prior archaic and inexplicable polling system did until a four-team College Football Playoff System was instituted in 2015.
Finally, college football rolled out a bracket system of four teams that would determine a national champion. What a novel and original idea.
That system has worked much better but still was not without some controversy and it lasted until the end of last season when the board of the College Football Playoff voted to expand the playoff field to 12 teams, a format that will feature, for the first time, a first round of playoffs separated from bowl games. The first round will consist of seeds 5 through 12 playing one another at the home stadium of the better-seeded teams, or another venue of their choice. Then, the quarter- and semi-final playoff games will consist of the New Year’s Six bowl games, with a national championship game after that.
The teams that did win titles in the BCS era are listed below. Penn State did not make an appearance in a BCS title game.
Tennessee 1
Alabama 3
Florida state 4
Miami 2
Auburn 2
Va Tech 1
Oklahoma 4
Ohio State 3
Notre Dame 1
Nebraska 1
LSU 3
Oregon 1
USC 2
Texas 2
Florida 2
Penn State 0
Since 2015 the teams and their total appearances in the College Football Playoff system are listed below. Again, conspicuous by their absence is the football factory from Happy Valley.
Alabama 8
Clemson 6
Ohio State 5
Oklahoma 4
Georgia 3
Michigan 3
Notre Dame 2
Washington 2
LSU 1
Texas 1
Oregon 1
Florida State 1
Michigan State 1
Cincinnati 1
TCU 1
Penn State 0
James Franklin Returning Penn State Football to Prominence
So, what happened to Joe Paterno’s legendary program from 1986-87? – and please don’t give me the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
That happened 16 years later and had really nothing to do with Joe’s wins and losses per se.
The scandal did indeed set the program back a few years with the loss of scholarships, detrimental reputational harm to the once shiniest and once thought to be most pristine of college programs, and head coaching instability, prior to the hiring of James Franklin.
Say what you want about the incumbent headman at Penn State but he did turn a complete disaster into a stable, successful, highly reputable, and winning program again.
But, his contract with Penn State runs for another eight years, which has many Franklin detractors up in arms. Why? Because there’s a growing concern in Penn State circles that Franklin might be no better than a 10-win coach. He takes in a cool $7.5 mil annual salary on top of incentives which ranks him as the second-highest-paid coach in the Big Ten.
However many Franklin detractors believe that his hefty paychecks are not commensurate with Franklin’s performance in big games.
Now, there is a veritable plethora of programs out there whose fan base, boosters, and alumni would kill to get a waft of 10 wins almost every year.
But, in Happy Valley, Paterno’s title teams of the 80s set the bar for all future Penn State coaches and players, and the expectations since those days have never waned in the Penn State community.
I sat down with the legendary LaVar Arrington last week and asked him his thoughts on the past regime, who he played for in the late 90s, and the current one, and if the current one is capable of taking Penn State back to the ultimate prominence of a by-gone era.
In no uncertain terms and without hesitation Arrington sank his teeth into the subject matter at hand.
“I would have loved to play for James Franklin,” Arrington declared. “I just want to be who I am. Shape and mold me, let me know if I’m right or if I’m wrong. I have no problem being coached, but allow me to be who I am. That’s something that I believe is the differentiator of the two of them.
“I feel like that’s one of the biggest assets that James Franklin brings to the table … I’ll just say If you ask me, we got robbed (in 2016), the year we had a tremendous team that won the Big Ten, and a team that didn’t even win the Big Ten goes into the College Football Playoff (Ohio State). He’s proven that he can be that level of a coach.”
We interrupt this piece to go inside the numbers on Franklin’s glaring issues in big games. To many, this has become an uncomfortable truth about the head man and the scoreboard never lies.
Penn State is just 1-12 against top-10 teams in the coaches poll since they defeated Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship game in 2016.
Here’s a look into how Franklin has fared in the last 10 contests against top-10 teams. Just a heads up – look away if you’re squeamish.
| Nov. 11, 2023 | No. 2 Michigan | L, 24-15 |
| Oct. 21, 2023 | No. 3 Ohio State | L, 20-12 |
| Jan. 2, 2023 | No.10 Utah | W, 35-21 |
| Oct. 29, 2022 | No. 4 Ohio State | L, 44-31 |
| Oct. 15, 2022 | No. 3 Michigan | L, 41-17 |
| Nov. 27, 2021 | No. 9 Michigan State | L, 30-27 |
| Oct. 31, 2020 | No. 2 Ohio State | L, 38-25 |
| Nov. 23, 2019 | No. 3 Ohio State | L, 28-17 |
| Nov. 9, 2019 | No. 10 Minnesota | L, 31-26 |
| Sept. 29, 2018 | No. 3 Ohio State | L, 27-26 |
Let’s face it to return his program to prominence Franklin has to be able to beat the two “elephants in the room” within the conference.
Ohio State and Michigan have both been a zookeeper’s nightmare and the gatekeepers of the College Football Playoff as far as the Big Ten Conference goes. The arrivals of Oregon, USC, and Washington to the Big Ten this season won’t make the climb to the top of the mountain any less steep.
Franklin is 3-7 all-time versus Michigan and just 1-9 versus Ohio State.
All told, Franklin is 4-16 versus the aforementioned Big Ten blue bloods. That’s a winning percentage of just .200 in the two biggest games of the year since he was hired by Penn State back in 2014.
If those were Franklin’s stats as a baseball player he’d probably be enjoying a life sentence in Lakewood, NJ as an esteemed member of the Jersey Shore Blue Claws, the High-A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies.
Arrington conceded that the empirical data on Franklin in the big games can’t be ignored.
“When you get the kind of contract he was awarded,” Arrington said. “And you’re not playing in the College Football Playoff, or you’re not winning against Ohio State and Michigan more than he has, because he has come up short against those teams, the criticisms are going to be just. It is what it is.
“There’s no getting around that. He has to have tough enough skin to be able to shoulder that and handle that, and just remember who was there and who wasn’t there when he was in those games.”
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James Franklin, Penn State Football’s Biggest Hurdles to Clear
Outside of the top 10, Franklin has had a hard time overcoming teams ranked in the top 25 in general. He holds a 12-26 record over teams ranked in the top 25 of the Coaches poll.
Starting at the top of the 2016 season, Franklin is 12-20 against the top 25 teams in the nation. Here’s how things have ended for Franklin in his past 11 games against programs that fall under this category:
Dec. 30, 2023 #11 Ole Miss L, 38-25
Nov. 11, 2023 #2 Michigan L, 24-15
Oct. 21, 2023 #3 Ohio State L, 20-12
Jan. 2, 2023. #10 Utah W, 35-21
Oct. 29, 2022 # Ohio State L, 35-21
Oct. 15, 2022 #3 Michigan L, 41-17
Jan. 1, 2022 #21 Arkansas L, 24-10
Nov. 27, 2021 #9 Michigan State. L, 30-27
Oct. 9, 2021 #23 Iowa L, 23-20
Nov. 21, 2020 #16 Iowa L, 41-21
Oct. 31, 2020 #2 Ohio State L, 38-25
For those who are in the “Fire James Franklin” faction, consider this. With a huge buyout of $64 million in 2023 and $56 million in 2024, it’s hard to see a scenario in which Franklin’s job is on the line, but it’s easy to see where the high level of frustration is warranted.
Franklin pulled in a bigger payday than Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, whose team captured last year’s National Championship and soon thereafter bolted for the NFL to be the next head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers. To date, Franklin is 88-39 (.693) overall in his 10 seasons with the Nittany Lions.
But, if you think Franklin has it hard at his place of employment you should try punching your time card in Columbus or Ann Arbor.
“If you think about what (head coach) Ryan Day has been able to do at Ohio State,” Arrington said. “He’s lost to Michigan the last four or five times, it’s been rough on him. If you really think about it, that man lost one regular season game and they’ve been calling for his job.”
Why? Because his Buckeyes have lost to Michigan the last three years and haven’t won a National Championship since Urban Myer did it in 2014.
Of course, I’d have been remiss if I didn’t jump in and add former Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh to that miss of ridiculous, ungrateful over-reactionary fan bases.
Harbaugh pretty much jettisoned himself to legendary status in Ann Arbor last season.
But, prior to bringing home his alma mater’s first National Championship since 1997, the Wolverine powers that be did not hold him in the highest esteem. Why? Because Captain Comeback had the same problem that James Franklin has currently, prior to last year’s breakthrough for Big Blue.
Before beating the Buckeyes the last three years Harbaugh had lost to Ohio State eight years in a row.
“You’re right” Arrington said. “They made him take a pay cut during COVID, they wanted him out, they treated him like a second-class citizen for a moment there, and it came back to bite [Michigan] in the ass.
All of that being said I asked Arrington straight up, “Is coach Franklin the guy? … Can he get it done?
Arrington strongly believes that he is and he can.
“We are a top-25 or top-10 team every year,” Arrington said. “We only lose the big game, I understand we want to win the big game. But, are we at Penn State closer to being an elite program or closer to being a mediocre program? If James were to leave, what coach are we bringing in that’s going to make us an elite team? Do we really know if that person is going to come in and be the person that we thought he was going to be?
(After the Bill O’Brien debacle) “James Franklin was hired, he took on the challenge, and he took over a team that was on the brink of being a mediocre program and he took it to a place where he won a Big Ten title and has been competitive in recruiting and competitive in-season since he’s been there.
“If I’m thinking about this the wrong way, I could convince myself that he hasn’t done enough, but if I’m thinking sensibly, I’m saying to myself ’keep tweaking it, keep evolving…I think James Franklin is the guy. He does have a long-term contract, if it doesn’t work out that way then he crosses that bridge when you get to the late stages of his contract, you assess it or evaluate it, just like you would do everyone else who has a long-term contract.
“By no means have I ever looked at this team and thought ‘wow, they’re doing so poor[ly] that we need to fire James Franklin. If you’re thinking that, I think there could be malice coming from somewhere else other than what that man’s performance has been.”
The good news for Franklin and his program is that the College Football Playoff, much like society, is becoming more inclusive.
James Franklin, Penn State, and The Expanded College Football Playoff
This upcoming season marks the first year that the College Football Playoff is expanding to 12 teams and that means guaranteed bids for the top five conference champions who have at least eight teams in the conference and seven at-large bids for the highest-ranking remaining teams.
The new format will most certainly have Penn State football in the conversation most years with a markedly higher chance of surviving the four-round single-elimination tournament and thus, giving Franklin a shot to join the Joe Paterno club of National Championship coaches.
So then I asked Arrington to compare Paterno, and his old school principles, to Franklin, who is more of a player’s coach by all accounts, and was a bit blown away when he admitted to me that he believes his former coach held the program back when he played, due to his unwillingness to adapt to his surroundings.
“Let me start with what isn’t parallel” Arrington began. “One thing that sticks out to me that isn’t parallel (between the two coaches) is that James Franklin understands the new-age athlete. Whereas, in my day, Joe wasn’t going to sacrifice understanding the new-age athlete; Joe was going to recruit a Penn State athlete. That to me is the difference there. That’s a staunch difference.
“We wouldn’t have been able to have golds, we wouldn’t have been able to have dreadlocks … The idea of being able to be yourself; we were only able to have facial hair as a mustache. It was very military-driven, the way that Joe ran the program when he was there, versus, James Franklin, is very different in how he governs his team. I think he gives them some autonomy in each player’s individuality.”
“I ultimately felt like when we were there, that last group that I was with that if Joe had just let us be ourselves, I don’t know that we would have lost a game in two or three years.”
“Bring the discipline, bring the structure, make sure guys are abiding by the rules but let guys be themselves, with the type of talent and the guys you recruited, don’t make them something different, just make them more of a man, make them more responsible, which is what any program should do. But, let them be the person you recruited, don’t bring a person to your school and he’s exactly who you recruited and you don’t like him for your program because he’s exactly who he is. That to me was probably the biggest error in terms of my time at Penn State. That’s what I would pick on.
“Now, what I would say the similarities are between James Franklin and Joe, is they love their players. They love their players hard. Their players are their guys. There’s no mistaking that.”
“Joe would open up his own house to players. James opens up his own house to his players. The admiration that Joe had and the love that he had for us, was tremendous. I felt that at the highest of levels later on in my life after I was well into my NFL career and even post-football career, he was one of the most amazing men. It illuminated to me who Joe was, once I became older.”
“James has that same impact on the players that he coaches. For my son, (LaVar II, who will be playing linebacker for Franklin and Penn State in 2025) I got to see it play out in real-time, just that alluringness of how he feels about his guys and his willingness to allow guys to be who they are.”
Here is NittanyCentral’s conversation with LaVar Arrington on his playing days, the state of the program under James Franklin, LaVar Arrington II’s commitment to the Nittany Lions, and more. It has been edited for length and clarity.
NittanyCentral: I saw a piece on Joe, as pertains to you way back 25 years ago, talking about because you did some things on the field because you were so athletic.
LaVar Arrington: “I prepared. That’s the difference. I prepared”
NittanyCentral: I understand that, they asked Joe, and he said ‘You’ve got to understand that the old man still knows more than he does …
LaVar Arrington: “… And if you want the keys to the car, you aren’t going to get the keys to the car unless you do it my way. I know the quotes. I know the exact quotes.
NittanyCentral: Did you do it his way?
LaVar Arrington: “I absolutely did it his way … If I didn’t … Let me ask you a question … At Penn State from the late1980s through the mid-1990s, if you didn’t do it Joe Paterno’s way, do you think you were going to play? Do you think you were going to stay on that team? Did you think you were going to stay at that University if you didn’t do it Joe’s way?”
NittanyCentral: I would think not, but some coaches had different rules for elite players, I don’t know what the deal was there, but if you could do things off the charts …
LaVar Arrington: “If you go look at the reports and the history of how I was covered when I was in school, the things Joe said, I was not even the best linebacker on our team. I truly believe he believed that I believed that, I believed Brandon [Short] was the best linebacker on our team. I was the best player on our team.
“In my estimation, I was our best player.”
NittanyCentral: What was the difference?
LaVar Arrington: “You use athleticism, and through the years, it turned into an irritant to me, because I’m intelligent. I’m highly intelligent.
“Let me put it in context … Super intelligent. I learned how to watch film with my coaches … Now, with learning how to study film and my preparation to study film, I was also an athlete. I played basketball. I ran track. I used speed, I used quickness, I used agility to be what I wanted to be on the football field, the same thing I used on the basketball court, the same thing I used when I was running, as a track-and-field guy.
“I was able to take my mind, take what it was that I studied, and used my intelligence and my intellect to actually photoshoot in my head, snapshots of what my opponent was doing. I was doing the LaVar Leap in high school. I did it several times in high school. I was leaping over dudes in high school, it wasn’t just crazy athletic, sure it was athletic, it was me being able to use the timing from what I learned … I was able to dunk on people, and I took those things my steps, my footwork, my jab-steps and I applied it to my understanding to what it was I was doing out there on the field.”
“If I saw a guy and his head was down and his hands were heavy, I knew he was coming off the ball as a lineman. If he was a running back, if I saw him gather himself and drop his outside shoulder, or if I was getting upfield and he was dropping his inside shoulder, I knew he was aiming to try to get my knees, for a chop block.”
“So, I’d test the theory. I’d be in a game and test the theory … If I see him drop it and he goes down, okay he did it. I’d test it again, and he did it, again. I might do it again. I’m in-game testing my theories of all the film preparation that I put in going into the game.”
“If there was a big moment in the game, here we go, the Illinois play … I knew, that if in a short-yardage situation and Illinois came out of the huddle quickly, if they ran up to the line quickly and the lineman goes straight down into their stance, it’s on first sound. It’s on first sound, and they’re going to almost wedge down as Philadelphia does, they’re going to slant and cut low to get the running back the space to get that short yardage. I knew this. So, how high do you have to jump if a guy is cutting at your knees and ankles? I knew the count was on … If you want to know what my biggest trait was … I was fearless. It wasn’t just athletic, I was not afraid to test my theories of what I studied and I prepared for during the week. And, I never got that credit. I was always labeled with ‘Oh my God, he’s just the most athletic player I’ve ever seen … Look at the athleticism.’
“But, you look at a guy like [Paul Posluszny] and what’s the first thing that people say about a guy like Poz ‘How smart he was … One of the smartest ballplayers you’ll see in your life.’ Me and Posluszny have the same game. Our film, me and Posluszny’s film, is almost identical. It’s almost identical if you look at how Poz made plays, and how I made plays. That’s why he won the Butkus award and I won the Butkus award, that’s why he won the Bednarik award, and I won the Bednarik award. Our play was almost mirror images. He leaped to make a stop as well … He timed a snap, he leaped over, and met some running back in the gap to make a goal-line stand, but he was looked at as the super-intelligent linebacker, and LaVar’s the athlete.
“For me, this is me putting it in context, did I do everything the way Joe wanted it to be done? No, because I’m LaVar. I’m not Joe. I can only do what LaVar can do within my interpretation of what my world is, what I prepared to do, and what I have going on. I can only take my teaching … If you’re a coach of superior confidence and belief, let me take what you’re teaching me and make it my own. Don’t take what you’re teaching me and make me do it exactly to the letter to the very minute detail of how you see it done. I went through the gap I was supposed to blitz in when I did the LaVar leap, I just dove through it, I didn’t run through it. It’s a minor difference. I was lifting the A-gap in that play, I dove through the A-gap on that play. Am I not doing what Joe wants or doing what he wants?”
NittanyCentral: Absolutely. But you left your feet, so if it’s not on the first sound and you may be offside …
LaVar Arrington: “That’s the fearlessness. Name me one great player who didn’t make mistakes. Name me one great player that played the game and played it with their heart and their mind. And didn’t make mistakes? Name me one player, great or not who didn’t make a mistake in the game. When you get the attention on you, the onus and the weight of what you do is always magnified, so the things that he said that I didn’t do, that made me ‘undisciplined’ that followed me my entire career, he’s a ‘freelancer’ that followed me my entire career, that was a weapon that was used against me my entire career, it’s only because the things that you saw me do, you’ve never seen before.”
“You’ve never seen people do the things that I do. So, now you’re watching every single thing that I’m doing. Joe in a lot of ways, wanted to control what my level of exposure was. Now, when I was in school, I thought he was a hater. When I got older, I realized he was trying to protect me. The very thing that he was saying, the things he was doing to minimize me, in a way where … Joe was the type after the game, we could have pummeled the other team, Joe would say ‘we did alright, we made a lot of mistakes, we have to go back to the drawing board, we have to get better.’ Joe wanted you to underestimate, underestimate us, underestimate us, it got to a point where I was doing things where I wasn’t being underestimated, I was being expected. That’s just as dangerous.
“Expecting is just as dangerous as anything else. ‘I expect James James Franklin to play for a national title’ or ‘I expect James Franklin to beat Ohio State and Michigan’ or ‘I expect LaVar Arrington to do the LaVar leap every single play.’ or, ‘I expect LaVar to do something spectacular on every single play,’ as crazy as that might sound, that’s the reality that gets created, so now you’re paying attention to everything. If I made a bad read, it’s like ‘There it is, LaVar made a bad read, he’s undisciplined, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t play within the scheme … ‘ You might have got me. I read it, and I have two reads, I have a read of my left side, and a read to my right side, I’m a cutback-move-reverse player on this play; I see it, and I should go slower because I’m a CBR player, but I thought I had a cut on it, and I went. There was a play where the ball came back and it was a boot, it was a misdirection, I should have been there. It happens.
“Things happen. But, did I get up early, did I go to class, did I go to workouts, did I go to meals, did I go to study halls, did I go to practice, did I practice my ass off every single day, not just go to practice and be there, but did LaVar practice his ass off? did he go into the weight room and say ‘This is my weight room, I own this weight room right now,’ did LaVar own what he did every single day because he wanted to be the best teammate and the best player that he could possibly be for his coaches and his teammates? 100 percent. 100 percent.
“This is what I love about James Franklin and this regime of coaches. They praise that. They don’t stifle it. They praise it.”
NittanyCentral: Did Joe Paterno stifle that a little bit?
LaVar Arrington: “I think so. I think so.”
NittanyCentral: That’s interesting.
LaVar Arrington: “I think if you had a very large personality and large persona it made him uncomfortable. Listen, he created a very defined approach. I broke the mold of that approach. I was not the mold, the regular mold of what a Penn State player was or is … I was a Miami player. I was probably going to go to Miami, and not going to Penn State. If Marlon Barnes doesn’t get murdered, and if they don’t go on probation, I would have gone to Miami.”
“But, being from Pittsburgh, I wanted to be a linebacker. I wanted to play linebacker at a high level. I just remember growing up with what ‘Linebacker U’ was, Linebacker U, you’re in Pittsburgh, the Steelers, the Steel Curtain was the equivalent of Linebacker U. I grew up on Mean Joe Green, and Greg Lloyd, and Levon Kirkland and Earl Holmes, and all of these different players that were playing. Jack Lambert and Jack Hamm were gods. Mean Joe Green and L.C. Greenwood were gods to us as kids. It was the same mentality for those 80s teams at Penn State.”
“I can remember the smell of the day. I remember where I was at, where I was sitting … I was in church, I ran out of church, I went to my Dad’s car, I turned the car on so I could listen to the Fiesta Bowl, I remember them handing the ball off to D.J. Dozier … Shane Conlan on the tackle, Bob White on the play, I’m listening to the game, I can run the whole game back. I could tell you my memories of what made me love Penn State at a young age. But, as I got older, I had to have my wrist bands a certain way, having my tape on my hands and my wrists a certain way, wearing my uniform a certain way, playing a certain way … If you look at my high school film, don’t bring me to Penn State and tell me I’m undisciplined and what I’m doing is the same exact thing I was doing in high school that made me the player of the year and you recruited me to come there”
“That’s an oxymoron. That’s a major contradiction. Now you have people in your ear, your teammates are looking at you funny, your teammates are looking at you funny. Everyone’s trying to figure out how do we fit this that and next thing you know, we lose a game we shouldn’t even lose.”
“Looking at how James Franklin is, and what he has created culturally speaking at Penn State, he brings in solid dudes. Sure there have been here and there were things didn’t go right and it is what it is, but he brings in solid dudes that get their degrees, they’re positive contributors to the community and he loves his guys. To me, as long as you love these guys and as long as they are who we thought they were and they are there to contribute, don’t judge that man because he has dreadlocks, and we didn’t have dreadlocks when Joe was the coach. Don’t do that.
“That’s part of that disconnect that we’re. talking about. This guy has gold fronts, don’t judge him because Joe wouldn’t bring a guy with gold [teeth] here. Judge him off of the content of his character. Judge that. That’s what I love about James Franklin. Now it’s opened up recruitment to getting guys that we probably wouldn’t have gone after or wouldn’t have had a chance in hell to get them to come to Penn State, anyway. I think there’s a different level of the idea of a person being able to be a person.”
“When I coach as a head coach, I always say ‘Bring your best you If you bring your best you, then we become our best us.’ If your whole focus is ‘us, us, us, us, no me in team, it’s all ‘we, we, we’’ how the hell are you getting better? How are you getting the best you that you can be? If it is all about everything else? It’s all about everything else? No, it’s not about everything else, it’s about the mastery of you. You have to master you. If you master you, the world is illuminated in a way that it’s like The Matrix for you. When you master who you are, and now being the best teammate … The whole saying ‘you have to love yourself, before you can love yourself’ don’t be so busy trying to love everybody else that you can’t love yourself. How are you going to love them at a high level if you’re not even loving yourself? You can’t do it?”
NittanyCentral: That’s phenomenal stuff. Let me ask you, what kind of player is your son? You had that larger-than-life personality wherever you went, how does your son match up against that kind of player? He might be like a Miami player back in the day, or maybe he’s a Penn State player and the kind of kid Joe would recruit. Does he have the personality his dad has? “
LaVar Arrington: “Joe would have loved my son. He would have loved him. Man is almost like the total antithesis of who I am.
“He doesn’t want the camera in his face. He doesn’t want it. But, when he’s on the field, he’s a hunter. He hunts.
“The one thing that I’ll say is the one way that he’s like me, and could be a tad bit more, is his ability to track the ball. He gets to the ball as fast as anyone I have seen at the high school level. He gets to the ball in a hurry. When he gets there, what he didn’t have early on, it was probably because of his size. He was playing big schools with big players and he was slight, he was lighter … His finish, it didn’t look, like he was dragging guys. Last year, the dragging down turns into they’re going DOWN.”
NittanyCentral: Like he owns the down.
LaVar Arrington: “Going into this year, going into my senior year, I was 18 years old. I was 18. And, I was turning 19 that June. I was a 19-year-old freshman, which would recertify or reclassify kids, that’s more common now. My kid’s 17. He’s 17. He won’t be 18 until May. His season will be over. He’s young. I don’t really, if I’m comparing him, I’m looking at what he was when I was his age. He’s much further along than me, at his age than what I was at mine.”
“He’s cerebral. He’s a student of the game. His two vices are playing video games, and he watches film. And, he watches film of himself, he watches film of old players. He’s big on old, old players. He’s big on studying old Penn State players. He can probably tell you about any Penn State player that’s played of significance. He’s really into that. He analyzes very well.
“He would play how Joe would want him to play. He’s not the one who’s going to put a whole lot of sting on what he’s going to do.
“ManMan is what we call him. Man for short. I say this because I think a lot of how he plays out is he’s more like Courtney Brown than he is like me. I think his approach is … “we called Courtney RoboCop. I think ManMan’s (LaVar II’s) approach is more like a cyborg, like half-man and half-machine. He’s more that than he is … I’m more emotion. I’m raw emotion.
“Man’s more like do-do-do-do target locked, target gone.”
NittanyCentral: Do you like watching that style of play?
LaVar Arrington: “I love it. Courtney Brown is probably one of the most impressive players I’ve ever laid my two eyes on and able to … I would say that I had one of the best seats in the house to one of the most amazing defensive football players to ever play college football.
“My son has those types of characteristics. Those types of capabilities, but faster. He’s not as big as Courtney Brown, Courtney’s a freak, he’s tall, he’s long, but he is fast. It’s so fun watching him play because he’s fast. And he’s sudden. So, it’s like, I’m gone, I’m there, boom. He’s a woo-licker. He hits people and people stand and go ‘woooo.’
NittanyCentral: Is he as intelligent a football player as you were?
LaVar Arrington: “He’s pretty sharp. He’s graduating early. He’s going to be an early enrollee. he’s smarter than me.”
NittanyCentral: Good luck, we appreciate you being on the show, it was really enlightening.
MORE: Grading James Franklin’s Tenure, So Far
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It was at PRISM where Staszak produced live games and began his career as an on-air reporter.
After a couple of brief stints with CBS-3, WB-17 and WGAL-8 in Lancaster, PA, Staszak began a 12 year stretch at FOX 29 where he became the lead sportscaster in 2007. It was there that Staszak found himself in the middle of Philadelphia Phillies World Series Championship coverage that earned him an Emmy nomination for best sports reporter in 2008.It was one of five Emmy nominations that Staszak earned over the course of his career.
All told Staszak covered three World Series, two Stanley Cup Finals, an NBA Finals and one Super Bowl during his television run.
Staszak left the TV business for 97.5 The Fanatic in 2013, where he enjoyed eight years bloviating his beliefs on how a professional football team should be run.In 2018 when he fortunate enough to be the first sports talk host in the city, along with cohort Zach Gelb, to provide post-game coverage of the first Super Bowl Championship for the city’s beloved Philadelphia Eagles.
Staszak was also a writer for 97.5 The Fanatic along with 4 Philly Sports and now covers Penn State athletics for NittanyCentral.com.
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