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James Franklin Says New NCAA Practice Rule 'Makes No Sense'

The NCAA will allow football teams not playing this fall to train 12 hours per week. Penn State coach James Franklin disagrees with that.

Penn State's football team can resume workouts Aug. 24 under a revised 12-hour weekly schedule that the NCAA Division I approved Wednesday.

But coach James Franklin said the new rule "makes no sense," particularly when teams in other conferences are practicing 20 hours per week as they prepare for a fall season.

"I don’t agree at all with the 12 hours," Franklin said Wednesday. "That makes no sense, that other teams are going to be playing a season and we're only going to get to work with our guys for 12 hours."

The NCAA Football Oversight Committee, on which Penn State Athletic Director Sandy Barbour serves, adopted the measure as emergency legislation for both the Football Bowl Subdivision and the Football Championship Subdivision. Teams not playing a 2020 fall season can hold 12 hours of workouts per week with two mandatory off days.

Up to five of those hours can include skill instruction, with a football, helmets and minimal padding. Contact is not allowed. Team and position meetings, as well as film study, are permitted.

The new limits run are effective from Aug. 24 to Oct. 4, the NCAA said.

Franklin called the measure an example of the "inconsistency" surrounding college football now as three Power 5 conferences (the SEC, ACC and Big 12) attempt to play a fall season while the Big Ten and Pac-12 have postponed theirs.

"I can’t understand how us being able to work with our student-athletes for 12 hours, when other people are getting the full season, how that's in the best interest of college football, how that's in the best interest of our student-athletes and how that's in the best interest of the Big Ten and specifically Penn State," Franklin said.

Franklin added that the issue underscored a larger one concerning the NCAA and consistency across college athletics.

"As much as you can keep this thing similar, that every college athlete across the country is having as similar an experience as possible, I think that's in the best interest of the student-athletes," Franklin said. "The NCAA I grew up with was about trying to create as level a playing field as you could possibly create. And right now, we're not living in those times. The times are very different right now."

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