Penn State’s Stunning Loss to UCLA Proves James Franklin Has Taken the Lions as Far as He Can
At some point, the slogans stop working. So it goes, for Penn State Football head coach James Franklin.
The “1-0 mentality” fades into background noise.
And the excuses sound like echoes from an empty locker room.
Penn State didn’t just lose to UCLA, it bottomed out.
Yes, that sound you heard coming all the way from the left coast at around 6:32 ET on Saturday was the thud heard round the college football world, signifying the bottom for Franklin’s time as the leading man in charge of the Penn State program.
For years, a faction of old-guard Paterno-era boosters tolerated Franklin without ever truly embracing him. They respected the stability, not the style.
Now, those same check-writers are grumbling that he’s in the way, blocking the fundraising momentum the school needs for Beaver Stadium’s renovation and long-term athletic growth.
“You can’t sell a new vision when the guy running it looks like he’s out of ideas,” one longtime donor told NittanyCentral after the loss.
An 0-4 Bruins team that hadn’t led anyone by double digits all season jumped to a 10-0 lead before the Nittany Lions ran a snap, and never looked back, stunning No. 7 Penn State 42-37.
Just for perspective not since 1985 has an 0-4 team beaten a top-10 team. That’s four decades if you’re keeping score at home.
A week after a double-overtime heartbreaking loss to Oregon just seven days ago, this was supposed to be the rebound.
Instead, it was the endgame.
It’s Time for Penn State Football to Move On From James Franklin
The Same Movie, Just More Painful
The numbers aren’t new, they’re just louder and more validating because when someone shows you who they are – you should believe them.
The 4-21 record vs.Top-10 opponents wasn’t an anomaly. That’s a 25-game sample size. It has been screaming at all of us for the past 11 seasons.
Saturday was Franklin’s third outright loss as a 20-plus-point favorite. That is flat-out unacceptable. None of it is bad luck. It has become a pattern. It has become the expectation. And right now it’s really killing the Penn State brand.
The Sequence That Said It All
With under three minutes left Penn State got a miracle.
With 2:49 left, the Nittany Lions had scratched and clawed back in the game to trail the Bruins 32-25. UCLA had a third and one at their own 34 when UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava had a wide open Anthony Woods in the flat, which should have been an easy pitch and catch for a first down, but Iamaleava threw a bad pass, and it turned Woods around.
Woods caught the ball but fell down short of the first down marker for no gain. It was a play that should have iced the game.
On the very next play the Bruins decided to go for it anyway as the only thing between them and a fresh set of downs was a couple of inches. But on this particular 4th down, the Penn State defense, torched all day, finally delivered, stuffing the Bruins and giving the Lions a short field, down just seven with plenty of time left on the clock.
Penn State advanced the ball about 20 yards but then stalled. Then came the call.
On 4th-and-2, from the nine-yard line offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki dialed up what looked like a QB sneak / RPO hybrid, a slow-developing tangle that UCLA sniffed out instantly. No misdirection. No aggression. No plan B. Zero imagination. A three-yard loss.
The Bruins collapsed the middle, swallowed the play, and the drive. The game, the season and James Franklin’s tenure died right there.
It was pure symbolism – opportunity meets hesitation, and hesitation winning out.
If James Franklin is still the head coach at Penn State University tomorrow night then everybody above him should be let go too. At this point it’s incredibly irresponsible to continue with him at the helm.
There isn’t one valid reason to retain his services any further. He did a very commendable job restoring the Penn State program to national prominence and respectability and he did it with integrity, class and dignity. James Franklin has absolutely nothing to be ashamed about.
James Franklin’s Words, Franklin’s World Unraveling
But in the moment after today’s game, Franklin struggled to take full accountability of the disaster that ensued on national television as he tried to explain everything away with untimely excuses:
“We did not handle last week’s loss well. We also lost some players in that game, during the week. Then, everything else. Travel. Everything else. We did not come out with the right energy to start the game… That’s my responsibility.”
It’s a quote that looks like leadership until you actually listen to it.
Travel? Energy? Last week?
You’re not coaching a mid-major coach. You’re the head coach of a Big Ten powerhouse with one of the biggest budgets, rosters, and facilities in America.
You don’t lose to an 0-4 UCLA team because of “travel.”
You lose because the culture is cracked and the message has expired. How your team wasn’t ready to play on Saturday isn’t just mind boggling, it’s telling. Your team looked lethargic, disinterested and unprepared.
Under Franklin, Penn State has now developed a pattern of losing “showcase” games twice; Oregon this season, Ohio State in both 2017 and 2018, the season-opener in Indiana during the COVID-2020 season, and Iowa in 2021 were all followed by a second loss, as a favorite, the following week.
That’s no longer an anomaly; that’s an identity.
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Quarterback Controversy, Culture Crisis
The quarterback storyline now doubles as the perfect metaphor.
Beau Pribula, thriving at Missouri, has completed 76 % of his passes for 1,203 yards and 9 TDs, plus 3 rushing scores. He’s decisive and fearless.
Drew Allar, the five-star face of the program, looks tight and tentative and comes up just as small in big games as his coach does.
That’s not on just the kid, that’s on the climate. Franklin’s offense suffocates freedom. It’s built for control, not creativity and the lack of innovation and imagination has reared its ugly head in big games time and time and time again.
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The Buyout Shield Is Cracking
Franklin’s 10-year, $85 million deal runs through 2031 and has been long treated like armor against change.
The buyout sits around $56 million if Penn State fires him this year but if he takes another job, he owes the school only $2 million.
That’s the paradox. Penn State feels trapped, but Franklin isn’t.
If Florida or another Power Five job opens and needs a “culture builder,” he could walk tomorrow for couch-cushion money. The rationale for hiring a guy who has been unable to elevate his own Power Five program to the next level is someone else’s business.
Money No Longer the Excuse
The university is expecting roughly $150 million from its new private-equity partnership, that the Big Ten Conference is reportedly on the cusp of entering into, and that influx changes the math completely.
Money used to be the reason Franklin was safe. Now it’s the reason he isn’t.
And therein lies the power struggle.
The buyout no longer looks like a burden. It looks like an investment in progress.
Endgame
Nobody disputes what Franklin has accomplished. He resurrected the brand, rebuilt trust, and made Penn State nationally relevant again.
But 11 years later, the ceiling hasn’t budged. The message is stale. The urgency is gone and the big wins are non-existent.
Saturday’s collapse wasn’t random, it was revealing.
Given a late-game miracle and a short field, Penn State ran a QB sneak into a stacked box while its head coach blamed “travel” in the postgame.
That’s institutional fatigue. The boosters know it. The board knows it. The fan base feels it.
The only question left is whether anyone inside Lasch Building has the courage to admit it.
Maybe Franklin finds a soft landing and a fresh narrative somewhere else.
Maybe Penn State finally decides it’s time to chase something greater than mediocrity.
Either way, the partnership that once rebuilt the program is now holding it back and it’s clearly time for a change.
Because when your miracle moment ends in a busted sneak and a list of excuses, you’re not unlucky, you’re cooked.
And if Franklin’s already talking about “travel”?
Maybe he should start checking Zillow near Gainesville.
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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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