Penn State’s coaching search has gone stale since the program moved on from James Franklin early this season. LSU, Florida, and Auburn have opened up to clutter the coaching carousel, and extensions for Curt Cignetti, Matt Rhule, and Mike Elko took top candidates off the board.
Meanwhile, James Franklin has settled in at Virginia Tech and has already started to pluck recruits and staff away from Happy Valley. So, as Penn State’s 2026 recruiting class crumbles, and the play on the field continues to improve under interim head coach Terry Smith, the calls for Smith to get the job full-time have continued to intensify.
A vocal endorsement for Smith, the former Nittany Lion wide receiver, came from a former Penn State quarterback, Michael Robinson, on NBC’s halftime show on the field at Beaver Stadium in Week 13.
“Athletic director Pat Kraft, he made a decision to let James Franklin go,” Robinson said in conversation with NBC’s Kathryn Tappen. “But I’m not sure he had a plan for what comes next.”
“This group seems to be having fun, and they all said they want Terry Smith to be their head coach,” Robinson said. “Every single player I talked to, every guy I talked to that said they’re thinking about leaving, they said, ‘I’m staying if Terry Smith gets this job.’ I talked to hundreds of alumni since we’ve been here, and every single one of them thinks Terry Smith should be the head coach, and I think Terry Smith should be the head coach.”
Michael Robinson makes the case for Terry Smith as Penn State’s next head coach
Robinson isn’t the first person to give voice to the players who want Smith installed full-time. That message has been pouring out of Happy Valley since Smith earned his first win as the interim head coach against Michigan State last week.
Much of the message is tied to the idea that Smith is a Penn State lifer, and that was a key point in Robinson’s argument. “I’m tired of coaches using the Penn State, other coaches outside of the Penn State program, to just get money, and that seems to be what’s happening,” Robinson said in reference to Cignetti, Rhule, and Elko getting rewarded with extensions this season. “Terry Smith deserves to be the head coach. He has roots here in Pennsylvania, and you can see the by the score and what this team is putting out, they’re fighting for him.”
It’s undeniable that Penn State has been playing hard for Smith. A team that expected to play for a national championship could have easily packed it in after three straight losses, and an injury to their starting quarterback dashed those chances. Yet, the Nittany Lions continue to play inspired football down the stretch.
Yet, that’s not a good enough reason to hire him for the job. Neither is keeping the current staff together.
“Yeah, there will be some,” Robinson responded to Tappen’s question about whether or not assistant coaches, players, and recruits will follow Frankling to Blacksburg. “James is a master builder of a program.. But at the end of the day, when I talked to those same staffers, if Terry Smith gets this job, people want to stay.”
See that’s what I don’t understand about this push for Smith to take over, despite three bad losses to start his interim tenure, and a total lack of experience running a major college football program.
The whole point of firing James Franklin was to bring about a wholesale change. Franklin couldn’t get the Nittany Lions over the top, and it was time to move on and break through that ceiling with a new regime. Now, the best argument to keep Terry Smith is that the program will stay the same? That he’ll keep the same players and coordinators who couldn’t win big games under Franklin around and somehow get different results?
Yes, Terry Smith deserves an interview. He deserves a chance to stay with the program as an assistant. But to hand him the keys because he took a team that was built to win a title and led it to bowl eligibility is completely misguided.