Penn State head coach James Franklin gets emotional discussing his team following heartbreaking loss in CFP semifinals

MIAMI – Penn State head coach James Franklin has shown plenty of emotions during his 11 years in charge of the Nittany Lions. His passionate press conference following a one-point loss to Ohio State in 2018 about taking the next step will always be remembered by fans. That’s just one of many moments following tough losses and big wins where Franklin has let it all out there for both fans and the media.

Following Thursday’s loss to Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl, Franklin had another moment that’ll stand out when asked about players like Tyler Warren and others who won’t suit up again in the blue and white. By the end, he began to choke up thinking about not only how close his team had come to making the national championship game but also thinking about the relationships he’d built with so many senior players.

“That’s the hard part, right? Like, Tyler Warren, a big gangly kid from Virginia that we recruited as a basketball player, was committed to another school as a quarterback, and he shows up here and will go down as one of the greatest tight ends in college football history,” Franklin said. “It’s pretty cool to watch his total development. He [graduated] from Penn State and just gets better. He should be the first tight end taken in the draft.”‘. It’s pretty cool to watch his total development. He [graduated] from Penn State and just gets better. He should be the first tight end taken in the draft.”

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Franklin could’ve stopped there, but he didn’t. He went on to mention sixth-year senior Dvon J-Thomas and how much it hurt for him to come off the field as Notre Dame rushed it to celebrate its win.

In modern-day college football, with NIL and the transfer portal and so many other things that dominate the headlines, Franklin made it clear that it’s still the relationships that matter to him the most. As his answer came to an end, he visibly had tears in his eyes, eventually whipping them away during the final question of his press conference.

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” Dvon [J-Thomas] didn’t want to come off the field. Dvon’s been playing for us for six years and two years recruiting him. Knowing all these guys’ families, their moms and dads and brothers and sisters. That’s the hard part, right? That, to me, is what it’s all about. I mean, I love the winning and I know how important winning is at Penn State. Trust me, that’s been made very clear to me time and time again.

“But to me, it’s about the guys in the locker room. It’s about their development. I take so much pride in how our guys go about their business, how they grow, how they develop academically in a time in college football where that’s being challenged. But I take a lot of pride in how our guys conduct themselves, how they carry themselves. The degrees they get. The type of men that they’re going to be. The type of leaders, fathers. Maybe I’m old school? I don’t know when I became the old coach, but I did at some point.

He finished out by saying, “We got a throwback program with throwback uniforms and I still coach them and love them like the dinosaur I’ve become at some point. I don’t know when that happened, but to me, it’s it’s about the guys. It’s about the guys and their development. So, I want them to get drafted as high as possible. I understand the transfer portal is a part of college football now, and NIL is a part of college football, and we’ll embrace those things, too, but I want this experience to be so much more than a transactional experience. I want it to be transformational. That’s what it’s all about for me.”

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Although he didn’t show the emotion that he did during the previous answer, Franklin also hit on how much he wanted this win over everyone else at Penn State earlier in his press conference.

“I wanted it for the guys, I wanted it for our players, I wanted it for the staff,” he said. “I wanted it for Pat Kraft and Neeli Bendapudi, who have been awesome. I’ve been doing this long enough to know when we have the support from our athletic director and president. That’s been phenomenal. So, I wanted it for them, but most importantly, I wanted it for the guys in the locker room and this staff. So, as you can imagine, there’s 1,000 different emotions going on and feelings, but as the head coach, I got to put on the right face for the guys in the locker room for what they need right now, and for my family.

“The sun will come up tomorrow, and the one thing I want to make sure that all those guys do is walk out of that locker room with their heads high and their chest out, because they have a ton to be proud of. There’s about 128 teams that would give their right arm to have a season that ended tonight, that we just had this year.”