James Franklin explains why he does not settle on Penn State's identity

James Franklin didn’t settle on an identity for his Penn State football team, at least publicly. 

When the Nittany Lions head coach was asked about his team’s identity, he declined to answer. He at least gave an explanation as to why and basically left it up to interpretation.

With Penn State playing Ohio State this weekend, Franklin might want every competitive advantage he can get.

“Yeah, good question, and I understand the question, I’m not going to answer that, because in my mind, what I try to do every single week is try to get the identity of the team they’re playing and use that against them,” Franklin said. “I think whenever you can say, ‘Okay, this is what this team’s identity is, and we’re going to take it away and use it to our advantage.’ So I think you guys got a pretty good idea at this stage of what our identity is and how we’ve played and how we’ve won games, but I don’t think there’s a question of that anymore. 

“I think the first three to four games, there were some questions about that, who you were going to be. But I think at this stage that’s pretty established and more times than not, it doesn’t matter what I say it’s what you guys say, what you guys raise anyway. I’ll let you describe that.”

Penn State is undefeated and this could be Franklin’s best shot at making the College Football Playoff and perhaps winning another Big Ten title. Sometimes, people forget Franklin and the Nittany Lions won the conference back in 2016.

On3’s Andy Staples summed it up greatly regarding where Penn State is as a program as it stands.

“Penn State still isn’t an elite football program, not unless it can start winning games like this one,” Staples wrote. “Last season’s Nittany Lions went 10-3, but they lost a slog in Columbus and then had their playcalling booed by their own fans in a home game against Michigan that could have gotten them back into the Big Ten title race …

Saturday, Penn State gets another chance to prove it has grown — that the Nittany Lions have lived that way around the clock since last season ended. Given Ohio State’s abundance of talent, scratching and clawing will be required. And they’ll have to do it for four quarters.”

No. 4 Ohio State travels to No. 3 Penn State Saturday for a 12:00 p.m. ET kickoff.