The 2025 Penn State football season devolved into a disaster after all of the preseason expectations. James Franklin was fired after their third straight loss to Northwestern. The move was shocking but decisive and sent shockwaves across college football. However, in all of the madness of this news, Franklin himself has been very silent when it comes to talking about what happened.
ESPN and The Athletic wrote big stories about the end of the James Franklin era at Penn State and how everything imploded in three weeks around the program. The two stories discussed how Franklin could never get over the hump at Penn State, and that it ended up being time to part ways. Both companies contacted Franklin to see if they could get a comment, but he did not respond.
The piece by ESPN reporters Jake Trotter, Adam Rittenberg, and Heather Dinich said, “Franklin, who didn't immediately respond to texts or calls from ESPN, won 104 games and reached double-digit wins six times in 11 seasons at Penn State, including the previous three.”
James Franklin's buyout at Penn State was $49 million, but it might be even more based on what has been negotiated. Franklin's public silence is surprising because his time with the Nittany Lions did not end badly, relationship-wise. The bridge was not burned, and the Nittany Lions even posted a big thank-you post for Franklin across social media.
Penn State named Terry Smith the interim head coach. He was also highly thankful to James Franklin and everything he could do at Penn State. However, he acknowledged that the entire team failed Franklin, so he's no longer in State College, coaching the Nittany Lions.
Given the expectations associated with the Nittany Lions coming into this season and the amount of money the team invested in adding talent while retaining talent, the way this all snowballed was shocking.
As one Penn State source told ESPN, Pat Kraft and the administration ensured that Franklin had “everything he needed to win a national championship and eliminate that stigma. … You want to keep those running backs? Let's do it. We need a wide receiver? Let's f—ing do it. Is Jim Knowles out there? How much is it gonna cost? What do you need? Let's go do it.”
However, the expectations kept growing, and when they continued to grow, it was inevitable that the team would never match those expectations, but in this case, they crumbled under their own weight.
