Penn State was done with James Franklin, and when you fire a successful head coach, you don’t get to decide where he lands. If Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft could decide, he would not have picked Virginia Tech.
The rumors have been building, and on Monday, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Franklin finalized a deal to become the next head coach of the Virginia Tech Hokies, just 36 days after he was fired by Penn State following a three-game losing streak to start Big Ten play in his 12th year with the program. While the deal gets Penn State off the hook for much of his exorbitant buyout because of an offset clause in his contract, he could be a thorn in the program’s side for years to come.
James Franklin finalizes a deal to become the next head coach at Virginia Tech
Franklin left the Big Ten, so he won’t be on Penn State’s schedule anytime soon. That doesn’t mean that whoever takes over in Happy Valley won’t be constantly contending with him. Under Franklin, Virginia, from Northern Virginia around Washington DC, down to Richmond, became a fertile recruiting ground for the Nittany Lions.
Penn State has nine players on its 2025 roster from the state. In the 2023 class alone, Franklin landed six of the top 10 players in Virginia, while Virginia Tech’s highest-rated in-state recruit was 16th-ranked Antonio Cotman Jr.
With a recent influx of NIL funds, Maryland, where Franklin was once the head coach in waiting before taking the job at Vanderbilt, which led him to Penn State, has begun encroaching on Penn State’s dominance of the DMV area (DC, Maryland, Virginia). Now that Franklin has put pen to paper with Virginia Tech, his first task will no doubt be to establish a recruiting pipeline from that area, which he knows so well, to Blacksburg.
When Franklin was initially fired, Penn State appeared as though it was going to be the top job on the market. Now, LSU, Florida, and, in the minds of some, Auburn, have surpassed it on the pecking order. A big reason for that is simple geography.
While recruiting is more national than ever and high school football isn’t the only way to add talent to your roster, geography still plays a significant role in the success of a program. It’s undeniable that Louisiana, Florida, and even Alabama are stocked with more elite high school players than Pennsylvania, and if Franklin carves into that recruiting base now that he’s setting up shop six hours away.
To make matters worse, Franklin getting in place this early in the process, Franklin has a head start on flipping his former commits to the Hokies. He’ll be well-positioned to raid what’s left of Penn State’s 2026 recruiting class and pluck a few of his former players in from the roster in the transfer portal. That was going to be a reality wherever he eventually set up shop for his third stint as a Power 4 head coach, but the proximity will only amplify Penn State’s problems.
Meanwhile, nearly every head coach on Penn State’s wishlist –Mike Elko, Curt Cignetti, Matt Rhule, Jeff Brohm- has signed an extension to stay put at their current program.
Franklin’s tenure in Happy Valley had run its course. The Nittany Lions hit their ceiling, and the pressure of an all-in season with national championship expectations was too much for the program to handle. Still, there’s a chance Penn State starts to regret moving on from the guy who got the team into so many big games, just because he didn’t win enough of them.