James Franklin Offers His Outlook for a 2020 Football Season
Does football receive more of the spotlight than other sports when it comes to being played through a pandemic? Penn State coach James Franklin approached the issue during an appearance on the Ross Tucker Football Podcast.
Franklin covered a range of topics on the podcast, including how his team has handled voluntary workouts and his experiences at Penn State over the past four years.
Further, Franklin again acknowledged the pressure he feels as Penn State's football coach, particularly with the economic impacts of COVID-19 lingering over the game. Penn State's athletic department and businesses across State College rely on revenue from the football season to make their annual budgets.
That prompted Franklin to wonder why football is generating more discussion over season cancellations than other sports.
"The thing I struggle with a little bit is, all of us Big Ten coaches we're on the phone talking," Franklin said, "and a lot of our coaches have sons that are playing AAU basketball. The gyms are packed right now, and no one is talking about that.
"... Because of the money, football gets beaten up a lot about a lot of these things. But these things are happening in other sports, and no one seems to be talking about it or concerned about it or worried about it or governing it. So don't get me wrong, I get it. And we've got some issues out there. There's other things that should be getting discussed as well."
Franklin said that Penn State's voluntary workouts have been "so far, so good" as the team enters the second phase of the NCAA's summer training calendar. Teams were scheduled to enter the mandatory period of workouts, but the Big Ten announced last week that they would continue to be voluntary.
Asked whether he thought the season might be played, Franklin hedged. "It depends on the day," he said.
"There's days that I'm confident and feel like we're trending in a really good direction and got a good plan," Franklin said. "And there's days or weeks that I'm concerned. ... I wasn’t sure how it was going to be because we have so many players that were coming back to State College from hot spots, but so far so good with us. But there's a lot of things that have to go right for us to make this work."
The whole episode is worth a listen.
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