The James Franklin era at Penn State is over, with the Nittany Lions firing their coach of more than a decade after three straight losses took them from one of the top-ranked teams in the country to out of the Top 25 entirely.
While it was a sudden dismissal, it was also one that had been building for some time, with Penn State regularly falling short in the biggest games under Franklin’s leadership. But that fact didn’t make the split any easier, and many of Franklin’s former players and coworkers have gone to bat for him in the past week.
