Penn State’s James Franklin hopes Big Ten-SEC group can fix college football [opinion]

Feb. 13—Nick Saban’s decision to leave college football a month ago after guiding Alabama to six national championships was stunning.

And last week, Chip Kelly’s resignation as UCLA head coach to become offensive coordinator at Ohio State and take a hefty pay cut was shocking.

Not necessarily to Penn State coach James Franklin, who has been complaining for most of the last year that college football has no guardrails when it comes to Name, Image and Likeness and the transfer portal.

“My biggest concern is you’re having people leave college football who would have never left college football,” Franklin said Tuesday, “because it’s gotten further and further away from what they signed up for.”

Kelly, once the Philadelphia Eagles head coach, has been one of the louder voices complaining about today’s college football model. It was no secret that he was looking to leave UCLA and return to the NFL, even as a coordinator.

He wound up replacing former Penn State coach Bill O’Brien, who spent a few weeks on the Ohio State staff before becoming Boston College head coach. Kelly rejoined Buckeyes coach Ryan Day, who he formerly coached at New Hampshire.

With UCLA joining the Big Ten later this year, Kelly knew the Bruins were not in position to compete with the conference’s top-tier teams from an NIL standpoint.

“I worried about five years ago when the money kept going up, that college football started to attract people into the industry for the wrong reasons,” Franklin said. “Maybe I’m old school, but I still truly believe that if you’re coaching college football you should be coaching it because you care about the kids and their total development academically, athletically, socially and spiritually.

“Because of the changes, I think people were getting into college football for things that didn’t align with that. We’ve been on a…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/penn-states-james-franklin-hopes-045200005.html

Author : Reading Eagle, Pa.

Publish date : 2024-02-14 04:52:00

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