JAMES FRANKLIN DIDN'T have any answers. Instead, minutes before Virginia Tech's Nov. 22 home game against Miami, he was asking for a considerable leap of faith. Roughly a dozen of them, actually.
It had been just 38 days since Penn State made the decision to fire Franklin six games into his 12th season with the program. Now, sporting a maroon hoodie inside the Hokies' team room, he was pitching a collection of high school prospects on why they should join him in Blacksburg. Among the group: quarterback Troy Huhn, running back Messiah Mickens and six other recruits who a month earlier had made up the core of a promising Nittany Lions recruiting class.
ESPN has a pretty good article today on how JMFF boosted the 2026 recruiting class in his first month and a half on the job. Good read.
To pull it off, Franklin leaned on longstanding relationships, a trusted recruiting staff from Penn State, a significant financial push on the recruiting trail and a pair of frantic late-November recruiting weekends, in turn offering an immediate window into the promising impact Franklin's presence could bring to a football program that has posted just one winning season since 2020.
"It was unusual and stressful," Franklin said. "I don't want to go through it again. But it ended up working out really well, hopefully for these kids and their families, but also for Virginia Tech."
ESPN spoke with 12 members of the program's 2026 class, including eight ex-Penn State pledges, along with program and industry sources to go inside the unprecedented two-and-a-half-week recruiting run that supercharged the start of the James Franklin era at Virginia Tech
"Coach Franklin told us this place was going to be home," Huhn, ESPN's No. 12 pocket passer, said. "He told me when I committed to Penn State to always trust him. I just relied on that."
"We took a detour there for a second," said linebacker Tyson Harley, another former Penn State commit. "But we got where we were supposed to be because we put our faith into Franklin."
I hope so too, JMFF, I hope so too.
Now we just need to recruit KMK to Virginia Tech.
Comments
Interesting quote:
And we know how that went down. What an amazing, impactful recruiting weekend!
our miss on that player is an interesting representation of the JF NIL strategy.... understand not overpaying for one player that blows your budget and creates unfairness, but one of the complaints from PSU (unclear if warranted or not) is that he was missing on top tier talent due to refusal to skew the payscales towards the top like others.
For us, I think that being fair makes the most sense, but was an interesting look into the very different strategies schools are deploying. Theoretically we will have more solid depth but may not have the same reach of high profile players.
There should be a pay scale by positional value. PFF or some other football data site ran an impact by position analysis and basically showed that QB, DE, OT, and CB had the most impact on a game, so if you plan to overspend, do so there. Breaking the payscale for a Safety just isn't worth it.
A safety recruit, not some one that has produced at the college level, a high-school recruit.
I don't think it has anything to do with fairness... It has to do with fiscally responsibility.
The complaint of the AD at penn state is that JF was using the same budget as other schools but that the flat pay scale was limiting their ability to get top talent. They specifically mentioned how Texas Tech had the highest NIL but was concentrating it on the top 60 players, leading to bringing lots of 5 star talent.
It's a philosophy difference on whether you would rather blow out your budget on half the team and then have to find a way to keep the "cheap" half of your roster happy or the expensive part on the field.
My understanding is that Franklin didn't do a flat pay scale - he has pay bands for each position/depth chart spot, and if a player gets an offer outside the pay band, they let him walk (see Seig this year).
TBH I think this is the right strategy. Now, of course, the pay bands/split need to be sensible/competitive, and you have to realize that overpaying the third string means your underpaying the starters.
I mean, now we know - 90% of your House Money/NIL should go to your top 40-50 players.
I agree that I think these bands and structure are the best route, I am just acknowledging that other strategies also have their own set of pros and cons and how Seig is a great example.
Finally, an ESPN article that isn't speaking on the internal disfunction or an idiotic Whit quote.
Agreed. Needs more turkey bacon talk.
I am still to date, amazed/shocked that PSU fired Franklin. One less bad interception against Oregon in OT and who knows how team plays against UCLA (which they almost still won after slow start) and Northwestern (solid defense that played well against Oregon too) after that.
This is not "one's man trash is another man's treasure" type of thing. I could be wrong and time will tell, but I truly think we hit the jackpot with the Franklin hire. As long as the winning happens (and the money/donations keep coming in), I think this hire potentially could change the direction of VT football in a way we can't even imagine yet.
I think both programs will be fine long term (assuming JMMF can bring us back to our rightful place in the sport; I have no doubt that Matt Campbell will at worse have a bunch of 10-win seasons at PSU). I think the bolded piece below (along with the rest of the tweet) is a very reasonable take:
I go back to Bud Foster texting JMFF after he was fired... thanks Bud!
This is so hard not to lose sight of. We have done so much improvement in the recruiting cycle but we still have a really young team and there's still a ton of settling in to be done from everyone.
Has the coaching staff actually been announced or has it just been sleuthed together by the internet?
They haven't announced a lot but Bitter has said on the TSL podcast that he's FOIA'd actual contracts and things. People have signed contracts, just no big announcements.
I don't think there's been like an official press release but plenty of reliable sources have announced the hirings.
Edit Must have read this post there's a presser at 11am today to officially announce the staff
I am tired of "winning" the off-season. It is time to start winning on the field again......
I feel like its been a really long time since we've actually won an offseason - I can remember single events that we spun into wins in the offseason but we haven't wholly won an offseason in a very very long time.
This. Gotta start somewhere
Was going to say the same thing! I don't think we've won an offseason since before Fuente missed on Devyn Ford
Longer than that, Hosley, Wilson, Thomas timeline.
BRM mentioned this over on SoS a few times, but not only did Franklin rebuild our 2026 class on signing day, but he rebuilt our 2025 class through the portal.
It's actually incredible what he's done overhauling 2 classes in so little time.
FTFY.
great stuff. Love when a recruiting miss is actual a bullseye for all the right reasons.
Huhn?