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James Franklin will coach his 100th game at Penn State on Saturday. On Tuesday, he and the university laid the groundwork for the next 100.
Penn State has finalized a new 10-year contract for Franklin to remain with the Nittany Lions. And while the deal will keep him around the top of the Big Ten in compensation — roughly $7.5 million per year plus incentives — the negotiations that began in September were focused primarily on a commitment to spending on the program as a whole.
Though the only numbers made public were related directly to Franklin’s salary, the key takeaway to this long-term agreement is that Penn State is willing to invest in more than just the head coach.
“We’ve been able to create a roadmap of the resources needed to address academic support, community outreach, Name, Image and Likeness, facility improvements, student-athlete housing, technology upgrades, recruiting, training table and more,” Franklin said through the school.
“This renewed commitment to our student-athletes, community and fans reinforces all the reasons I’ve been proud to serve as your head football coach for the last eight years and why my commitment to Penn State remains steadfast. Throughout this process I’ve kept our leadership council, recruits and staff updated on those conversations, and I’m excited we’ve reached an agreement we can finally share with you.”
The deal was made official just before 4:30 p.m. Tuesday following a vote of approval by the compensation committee of Penn State’s board of trustees.
Franklin is set to earn a guaranteed $7 million per year through 2031, plus a $500,000 retention bonus made payable each Dec. 31 he remains at Penn State. Incentives include reaching a bowl game, winning the Big Ten or the Big Ten East and higher payouts for reaching a New Year’s Six bowl or the College Football Playoff.
The buyout for Franklin to leave starts at $12 million through this spring and $8 million before the end of 2022. It falls to $6 million during 2023, $2 million from 2024-25 and $1 million for the rest of the contract.
“We are excited to have James Franklin lead our football program for a long time,” athletic director Sandy Barbour said through the school. “We will continue our collective efforts to constantly improve in all aspects of our program. We have made, and will need to continue to make, significant investment in our football program because we believe we have a very bright future under James.
“With this contract, we are signaling our sustained commitment to being one of the premier programs in the history of college football. Our goals and aspirations relating to football have never wavered, and our investments today and in the future of our program will allow us to compete at the highest level.”
Franklin had asked the public for patience this fall when his name was again linked to high-profile jobs elsewhere in the country. USC in particular seemed to be a legitimate threat to lure Franklin away after firing Clay Helton early in the season. Both national and local reports out of Los Angeles quickly identified Franklin as a top candidate for the Trojans.
A few weeks later, the LSU job also came open with Franklin reportedly drawing the interest of the Tigers, whose last three head coaches had all won a national championship.
That interest from other schools is what sparked talks between Franklin and Penn State about what it would take to keep him in Happy Valley. Franklin has said his dream is to become the first Black head coach to win a national title, and reaching that goal at Penn State would be helped greatly by catching up to the country’s top programs off the field.
“Nine weeks ago, the administration approached me about making a long-term investment in our football program,” Franklin said. “This prompted numerous conversations outlining the resources needed to be competitive at a level that matches the expectations and history of Penn State. What’s most evident from those conversations is the importance of our student-athletes’ success both on and off the field.”
Improvements have been made very gradually over Franklin’s first eight seasons at the helm of the program. The latest evidence is the construction project that has already begun over at the team’s Lasch Building headquarters on campus.
But securing the funding for that — $48.3 million — met with opposition from some members of the school’s board of trustees, namely former Lions assistant coach Jay Paterno, who suggested his late father would not have approved.
“My former boss used to say, ‘Football is here to serve the university, not the other way around,’ ” Jay Paterno told the board while voting against it last winter. “Football is a part of life, not life itself.”
When Lasch was first built during Joe Paterno’s long reign as head coach, it was a top-of-the-line facility that forced other programs to spend more to keep up.
But by 2012, the tables were decisively turned. Bill O’Brien inherited a program that had stagnated off the field in terms of infrastructure, and he and Franklin have both tried to fix it over the past decade.
“I’m very appreciative of the strides that we’ve made,” Franklin said earlier Tuesday before his contract was approved. “But there was a long period of time where we did nothing, and it put us behind. And we’ve been playing catch-up.”