Once Tom Allen left James Franklin’s staff to become the defensive coordinator at Clemson after just one year running the defense in Happy Valley, Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles began popping up as a candidate to replace him. While rumors of Knowles’s potential flip in this Big Ten rivalry haven’t quite died down, the Buckeyes’ national championship victory over Notre Dame and Monday night should have officially put them to rest.
Penn State is a premier program in college football, but clearly a tier down from its biggest in-conference competition. Ohio State is not the type of program that loses coordinators it covets for lateral moves to in-conference opponents. On the contrary, Ohio State is the program that poaches Chip Kelly from his head coaching job at UCLA to run the offense in Columbus under Ryan Day.
Maybe a struggling coordinator worried about job security in one of the most highly scrutinized places in the country would jump ship preemptively, but Knowles is currently getting fitting for a national championship ring after orchestrating the No. 1 defense in the country and preparing for Year 2 with Caleb Downs, the best defensive player in the country. There’s no reason for Knowles to leave Columbus and Penn State doesn’t have deep enough pockets to give him one.
Penn State hired two new coordinators last offseason, Allen and OC Andy Kotelnicki, and neither cracked $2 million a year. Allen was paid $1.5 for his services and Kotelnicki $1.6, which will jump to $1.7 in 2025. Meanwhile, Knowles signed a new three-year extension last offseason that averaged $2.2 million, Kelly made over $2 million in 2024, co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach Brian Hartline checked in at $1.6 million and both defensive line coach Larry Johnson and secondary coach Tim Walton received $1.4 million paydays with offseason raises. That makes five members of Day’s staff who make more or nearly as much as Penn State paid its coordinators last hiring cycle.
Jim Knowles is a defensive mastermind and would be a perfect fit in Happy Valley, but Penn State would be forced to pay him an unprecedented amount of money to leave, the type of money that the program may not even have.
Sure, Knowles is a fun name to throw out on a list of potential candidates, but if we’re dealing in reality, Penn State isn’t going to poach from the national champions, and any offer it made to try, Ohio State could easily match.