Changed by pandemic, Franklin vows lessons learned at Penn State

James Franklin is determined not to bury and forget Penn State’s doomed 2020 football season.

His Nittany Lions, fresh off an 11-win Cotton Bowl season, endured countless stumbles and setbacks, needed six games to notch their first win, and otherwise simply survived their way to the finish line. Even then, a bowl opportunity likely for a program with a 4-5 regular-season record, the Nittany Lions said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

The conclusion of the season, offering an opportunity to turn the page in January to a focused, devoted effort to the 2021 campaign, did not mean its lessons were lost in the process, though. Joining the Penn State Alumni Association and Nittany Lion Club for their virtual Coaches Caravan this week, Franklin made clear that the experiences of the past 12 months, painful as they might have been at times, still held tremendous value within the program.

“As we all know, there's going to be change and adversity,” Franklin said. “That's the one thing that we can count on in our lives, and being able to handle that change and that adversity.”

As Franklin would go on to recount, that change and adversity were plentiful for Penn State.

Already behind some competitors in the Big Ten and nationally who’d been able to secure some or all of their spring practices before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the program didn’t finally reunite formally on campus until late June. Even then, the conference leadership sped toward an August cancelation of the season, prompting at least one significant opt-out decision for linebacker Micah Parsons, which was then followed by a reversal of course and delayed start to an amended schedule.

All the while, Penn State had already started to adapt to a recruiting element that had been fundamentally transformed by an inability to welcome visitors to campus. Now cognizant of the scope and power of the tools available to the program to remedy those challenges, that they’re no longer technically necessary has not changed Franklin’s belief in their utilization and benefit.

“I think in a lot of ways, it's some of the technology that we were forced to use, that I actually in some ways am embarrassed that we hadn't been using them before,” Franklin said. “Zoom turned into a real positive and a way to connect. We had great parent meetings that we normally wouldn't have been able to have.

“I thought about how on vacation, it'd be a great way to check-in with your players and get that face-to-face contact. So I'm looking at myself and saying, What other technologies are available right now that we are not taking advantage of like Zoom? That was a big lesson for us.”

Pushing through those initial hurdles and obstacles, including a rigorous approach on a university-wide scale to preventing Covid’s spread, on the field, in recruiting, and beyond, Franklin indicated that the takeaways will help mold the program as it moves forward.

Determined to constantly develop, evolve and grow from the individual to the program-wide scale, it’s an opportunity from which Penn State will do just that.

“I think it was a tremendous lesson for our entire organization,” Franklin said. “One of the things that we've been talking about is, a lot of people are talking about rushing to getting back to normal, and the reality is, you better have grown from this experience. I know I have personally and professionally. And we're going to take those lessons with us and be better because of it.”

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