James Franklin takes a shot at Notre Dame’s special status, calls out college football leadership

Just a day before Penn State's Orange Bowl College Football Playoff matchup with Notre Dame, head coach James Franklin called for every team to be in a conference.

Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin
Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Through his first College Football Playoff appearance of his career, James Franklin has used his newfound platform to push for change in the sport. Penn State’s 11th-year head coach previously called for Nick Saban to become the first college football commissioner and for the sport to fix its transfer portal timeline that forced backup quarterback Beau Pribula to depart the program before its CFP run. 

Now, Franklin, whose team both missed out on a first-round bye as one of the four highest-ranked conference champions and missed the extra time off during conference championship weekend, calling out Notre Dame and its independent status. 

In his final press conference prior to the Nittany Lion’s Orange Bowl CFP matchup with the Fighting Irish on Thursday night at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, FL Franklin said, “No knock at Coach or Notre Dame, but I think everybody should be in a conference. Everybody should play a conference championship game or no one should play a conference championship game. Everybody should play the same number of conference games." 

Franklin isn’t the only prominent head coach in college football pushing for more uniformity, but he’s arguably been most impacted by the lack of it. The SEC plays one fewer conference game than the Big Ten and Notre Dame specifically doesn't play any conference games and had a particularly favorable schedule in its path to a CFP at-large bid this year. So, Penn State played nine Big Ten games in the regular season, plus an additional matchup with Oregon in the Big Ten Championship Game, and then hosted SMU in the first round of the CFP. With at least one, and ideally two games left, Penn State could play as many as 17 games in the 2024 season. 

With the introduction of the 12-team CFP format, many prominent figures in the sport have come out against conference championship games, however, the conferences would hate to lose such a productive cash cow. To quell those concerns, the CFP committee did not drop any conference championship losers out of the CFP and kept SEC runner-up and Big Ten runner-up Texas and Penn State at No. 3 and No. 4 in the overall CFP rankings despite championship game losses. 

It appears Franklin’s gripe is with the format and the conference championship games, not specifically with Notre Dame, and as such Marcus Freeman declined to drum up a pregame back-and-forth. 

While attacking the Fighting Irish may not be his primary objective, Notre Dame’s independence does provide a significant advantage in terms of qualifying for an at-large bid to the CFP, and a financial advantage for advancing through the tournament with no conference to split the substantial CFP payday with.

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