A Virginia Tech football insider believes former Penn State boss James Franklin will be the next head coach in Blacksburg.
Andy Bitter of TechSideline, who has been covering the team for the past 14 seasons, can’t confirm anything just yet.
But he’s spoken with enough people to the point where, on the latest episode of “Joe and the Fatman,“ he told Kyle Golik and me that he feels it’s going to happen.
It would be a quick turnaround for Franklin, who is just over three weeks removed from his firing at Penn State.
But that’s the way things are in modern college football.
WHAT BITTER SAID
“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “It sounds like it’s close. Who knows if this is just agents playing games or whatever it is, but we’ve heard enough from enough people that are kind of high up and know this process to think that, man, it feels like they’re very close to the finish line on this thing.”
It’s worth noting that Franklin has the top coaching agent in the game, Jimmy Sexton.
Bitter also pointed out that coaching searches “fall apart all the time in cases.
“This is still really early in the process,” he said, “so I’m trying to wrap my mind around an early November hire, because that really never happens before. But this is really a strange coaching market with so many big jobs open. Certainly, Virginia Tech is making a push to get this done right now. We’ll see if it happens, though.”
WOULD IT MAKE SENSE?
If Franklin to VT does indeed become reality, would it make sense for either party? Well, from Virginia Tech’s standpoint, it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t make sense.
After all, Franklin has a resume— five top-ten finishes, four New Year’s Six bowl wins and a Big Ten championship over 11.5 seasons at Penn State— that would make him an attractive candidate for major openings.
The better question is whether this would make sense for James Franklin?
He made it clear in his first public appearance since getting fired by Penn State that he not only wants to coach, but wants to win a national title.
Is Virginia Tech a realistic place for that to happen? Since VT has never won a title, it’s a question worth asking, and NSN wrote a full column about it not too long ago.
With that said, Virginia Tech has been a consistent winner before, and there’s little doubt that Franklin could turn it into one again.
