Former Penn State coach James Franklin attended a college football game Thursday night.
Marc Davis of WTKR News 3 in Norfolk, Virginia, captured Franklin at Thursday’s Old Dominion-Troy game.
On the surface, it may seem strange that Franklin would be watching Old Dominion play Tory, but there’s an obvious reason for it.
Old Dominion’s head coach is Ricky Rahne, who was on Franklin’s staff for nine seasons, first at Vanderbilt (2011-13) then at Penn State (2014q-19). Penn State fans know Rahne best for the last two seasons of his tenure, in which he was the offensive coordinator.
After 2019, Rahne became a head coach, taking over Old Dominion. Through five full seasons and most of a sixth, Rahne is 26-33 at Old Dominion and 19-18 in conference play (ODU was in the Conference USA when Rahne started and then moved to the Sun Belt ahead of the 2022 season.
After Rahne left Penn State, Franklin kept on, having a lot of success over the next five seasons— three New Year’s Six bowl wins, three 10 win seasons and a trip to the College Football Playoff Semifinal in 2024.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.That success led to sky high expectations for the 2025 season, expectations which the team ended up falling well short of, which led to Franklin’s dismissal six games in.
Franklin made it clear on a College GameDay appearance last month that he wants to coach again as soon as possible, and it seems to be just a matter of where it will happen in 2026.
It’s quite possible that he’ll be coaching in the state of Virginia, where Old Dominion is located, at Virginia Tech. We will just have to see what happens.
