Everything From Virginia Tech HC James Franklin At Early Signing Day Press Conference

Virginia Tech football's new head coach, James Franklin, spoke to the media on Early Signing Day at his press conference. Here's the entirety of what Franklin had to say:

Opening statement:

"So, first of all, I appreciate you guys all coming out to cover Virginia Tech football. We don't take it for granted and appreciate that. Obviously unique situation, right? Been here for essentially two weeks and had two recruiting weekends, official visits. It was a scramble. It was it really was a scramble. We were fortunate to be able to hold on to most of the Virginia Tech commitments., which was cool being able to hold on to that group that was excited about the history, traditions, academic reputation of this university. Combine that kind of with my background and my resume and my experience and we're able to hold on to most of those guys. Then, obviously use a couple weekends to get some guys that we were familiar with. I want to make sure that this is interpreted right. By no means were we out looking to take commits from any specific school. It really just came down to the kids that we had relationships with that we've known for multiple years. That's really what that was about. I'm very proud and appreciative of the staff that came with me, as well as the Virginia Tech staff that jumped in and helped. But I do want to mention these people by name. Andy Frank, Kevin Threlkel, Tristan Iannone, Chris Mann, Aeneas Hawkins, Carson Keeler, Caleb Tyler, Brett Arnold, Rashad Elby. When I took the job and everything went down, I called these people, asked them to come to my house. and said, 'Hey, I need you to come with me tomorrow to Virginia Tech. I don't know what you're going to get paid and I don't know what your job title is, but I want you to come and we'll figure it out.' And they all came and running behind the scenes to put this entire class together. And I'm proud of what we were able to do in a in a short period of time. Typically takes two years to fill a class and we were able to do it in in two weeks. So, I think it's an exciting thing to look forward and think about what we're going to be able to do in the future with all the resources here. The brand of Virginia Tech, the academic reputation of the university, and then also a little bit of elbow grease. So, excited about the class. We were able to cover both sides of the ball as well as special teams. Pretty much every position covered as well. We're always going to emphasize upfront the O-line and the D-line. Those are positions that it takes time to develop. If you fall behind in those areas, it's hard to get caught up. I learned that lesson the hard way when when I got the Penn State job. I think there was four or five scholarship offensive linemen in the entire program. So, I learned that lesson the hard way and that's something we'll always make sure we do a great job of recruiting. And then I think you also saw that we took a tremendous amount of pride in the state of Virginia. That will always be the case. It's got to start at home with the high school players, with the high school coaches. Obviously, we got to do a great job in the region and we got to be able to go national as well. But if you don't take care of your own backyard, it's hard to do any of those other things. So, it starts here at home. Everybody talks about the 757 when you talk about recruiting the state of Virginia, but it's really the entire state and we got tremendous respect for the entire state of Virginia and we will treat it as a priority. So, happy to answer questions and again just overall very, very pleased with all the hard work that we put in this to put Virginia Tech in the best chance to be successful moving forward."

On relationships and how much that played a factor in securing recruitments:

"So, I think for almost all of them, we were recruiting at some point, over the last two years, whether guys had come to camp, whether guys had been up for junior days, or whether guys had just kind of followed what we were doing at other schools. So, I think that helped. I also think the core group of guys that were committed to Virginia Tech were committed to Virginia Tech for the right reasons and felt like this was the right place for them and their family. And they were being patient to try to figure out who the head coach was going to be. And then when we combined all those factors, I think it worked out really well. But this is still a relationship business and whether that is staff or whether that is recruiting that plays a big part in this. When I talk about relationships, I talk about significant relationships with the players, with their high school coaches and their parents. When you're talking about a different school that's probably five hours away, in a very different conference, and those people felt strongly enough about Virginia Tech, our staff, me, the potential of this place, and then the resources because we could [invest]. Relationships are important, but I've had relationships with kids that I feel like our relationship was better than any other place in the country. But if the NIL package is too wide, this isn't the old days of 85 scholarships where it just comes down to relationships and what you've been able to produce on the field. So, you got to have the resources. That's the reality of today's college football. So, a lot of things have gone into it. Again, I'm very pleased with the class overall, especially when you consider the circumstances. I don't know if this has really happened before. We have official visits, and we have the tight end from Minnesota, Pierce [Petersohn]. And he says, 'What does the tight end room look like, coach?' I have no idea. I've been here three days. I can't tell you who's the tight end's coach going to be. You have to trust me. Who's the offensive coordinator going to be? You have to trust me. We had 17 recruits here on the second weekend. I'm the only coach. And I really didn't have answers for them, but I think it was a very unique situation. I don't know if it's ever happened before. I think the class when we got the job, I think the class was [No.] 124, depending on which service you look at. And it's not over yet, but I think we're somewhere inside the top-25 right now [Editor's note: Virginia Tech ranks No. 22 on 247 Sports at the time of transcription.]. So, I'm proud and I'm excited. It's a start. We still got a ton of work to do."

On the benefit of the two recruiting weekends and how many of the young men that were signed visited over the two-game visiting slate:

"So, I don't know if I have the exact number... But I think almost all of them, either the first weekend or the second weekend. So, it was really beneficial. And it was needed, right? But I would also say there's also differences, right? Some of these coaches took jobs and there was 19 kids committed there and none of them decommitted. I saw one coach show up and the No. 1 recruit in the country was waiting for him when he got off the plane. That was that was not the situation here. We had a core group of guys that were committed. But we had to build it. We had to build it. But we've done this before. We built a foundation and a program at Vanderbilt at a place that hadn't really had it in the previous 30 years before we got there. And one of the things I'm very, very proud about my time at Penn State is people are talking about that program [Penn State], like one of the best programs in college football and a consistent title contender. We weren't part of those conversations when I got there. So, this is a really good foundation to build on. We have some lessons and a model that we learned over those last two experiences that we'll use here. But I think that's also where the Virginia Tech staff has been critical, too, because all these places are unique and they're sophisticated and we don't have the institutional knowledge or the community knowledge yet. So, we have to kind of blend and merge these two things together to put us in the best position moving forward."

[Editor's note: Franklin then asked Threlkel about the ballpark number for the official visits conducted over the Miami and Virginia contests.]

"We had 22 official visits... There's only one that I can think of that was not on an official visit with us. It was only one. [Zaevion Cleveland] was the one guy. He went and visited West Virginia. Had us nervous. But we were able to get it done."

On incoming quarterback Troy Huhn, his style and whether that style says anything about the type of offense Tech would like to run:

"Just a really good player that we had identified early on, came to camp and threw for us. He's 6'4 ballpark. He's 220 pounds ballpark. He ran 4.75 for us. I think he'll end up being a 4.6 guy. His senior year, you saw him take a big stride in terms of making plays with his legs and that's going to be important. I don't care whether it's the NFL, college or high school. In today's day and age, you got to be able to make plays at the quarterback position with your mind, with your arm and with your legs. And he has the ability to do that. I was able to go watch him play live this year. He had a great senior year. I think he completed like 74% of his passes this year. His touchdown-to-interception ratio is really good. His high school went as far as they've gone in a long time. And he wasn't playing on a team that was loaded with other division one players, right? So, we've had a chance to get to know him as a person, as a student, the family. Dad played college football. Mom was a college basketball coach. Very competitive family. And we think he's got a chance to be good. So, we're excited about his future. But we're going to recruit quarterbacks that we think we can win with. And then, you have to have enough flexibility within your system to take advantage of the personnel you have. I think that's one of the big things, that is a little bit of an interview answer that I think most coaches miss on is every coach says we're going to run a system to take advantage of our personnel, but they don't really do that. They're an 11-personnel team and he's going to want to stay in 11 personnel. Their second tight end may be better than the third receiver. They don't want to be in 12 personnel, so they stay in 11. If you have two tailbacks, getting those guys on the field, whatever it may be, you got to have enough flexibility within your system to take advantage of the personnel you have this year. Recruiting, just like the draft, is not an exact science. You think you have a pretty good idea what you're going to get, but you never truly know until they show up on campus. And then we got to play to our strengths. So, those things are going to be really important for us moving forward, but mobility at the quarterback position will be a priority. But we're going to emphasize throwers. The throwing component is going to be critical, because a wide receiver can change the game faster than anybody. We've had some pretty good running backs, but those guys got to break two tackles, make two guys miss, to go 80. A wideout typically has to make one guy miss and go 80. So, we'd like to be able to put an emphasis on that and be able to open our offense up a little bit more."

On Franklin's expectations for Signing Day and whether he thinks he exceeded:

"Yeah, I don't know. I'm not a big guy on external expectations or goals. And even for myself, right? Because I think sometimes with goal setting and things like that, you have to be very careful. Because I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know what the current class looked like. I didn't know what would happen, with kids that we had previous relationships with. Would they be excited about Virginia Tech? Would this be the right fit for them? You just don't know. You just don't know how it's all going to play out. So, for us, we just got on campus, started running a thousand different directions, reaching out to families and kids about coming and checking this place out and visiting at the same time going out to practice and evaluating the current roster. Right now, I'm in the process of meeting with every player on the team. The last three days, we've been doing that, meeting with the staff, evaluating the current staff, also getting ready to obviously hire some external candidates, as well. So, got a lot of work to do in a short period of time. I must look tired and awful because Michael Hazel night told me to go home. I must have looked pretty rough. But just not a lot of hours in the day and not enough manpower right now in the building for all the things that we need to do."

On what will be important in developing this recruiting class:

"Yeah, it's all the things that you've probably heard before, but obviously, strength and conditioning is something I think we've done a really good job on. You look at our history of sending guys to the combine. Our guys have crushed the combine every single year. Our strength coaches get a ton of credit for that. Our guys are big, strong, fast and explosive. And we're going to continue to build on that. It makes it easier, the better you recruit. It's amazing how that impacts how much bigger, stronger, faster and explosive they can get in a weight room. Nutrition is an area. The SAPC. Our training table is a big part of that. That was finished a few years ago. Really important. I think we can even get better in that area, our nutrition bar in the weight room. All those things, development, when it talks about fundamentals and technique from the coach's perspective, when it talks about teaching football and getting our guys to understand situational football and how those things were going to impact our success individually and collectively, all those things are critical. But development's every aspect. It's mentally. It's how they talk to themselves. What is the voice in their head? How are they talking to themselves? How do they perceive situations? How do they perceive themselves? We're trying to put our guys in position, to be really successful in everything they do. And obviously, we're using the game of football to teach a lot of those lessons. But we also want the fans to be excited. We want the fans to see where our program is going and what our program is doing. But it's all about development. I don't care if you're a five-star or a three-star. It's about development. So, the day these guys step on campus, nobody cares about their star rankings anymore. It's about what you do on the football field. This is a humbling sport. Trust me, I know it's a humbling sport and you better come to work every single day. And our job is to develop them."

On his impression of the three Green Run High School prospects:

"So, a couple things that I would say on that. I mean, it's very obvious to me when I showed up here that Green Run is got a pipeline going right now with Virginia Tech on our current roster. Then, also with the young men that are committed to us. So, we're very appreciative of that and don't take that for granted and Coach [Brandon] Williams obviously is a big part of that too. But I think whenever you can have a connection like that, I think Green Run's an example of probably how it used to be with a lot of schools when it came to Virginia Tech. We got to get back to that where the high school coaches want to send them here, the players want to come here and we have evidence of success. We have evidence of players coming here and doing well. And again, that goes back to the relationships, right? If a high school coach sends you a guy and you do a great job with him, he's more likely to send more. No different than the Love family. They had a great experience, they're sending more. So, that's what we want to try to do. We want to treat these guys fairly. We want to coach them hard and love them hard and starting in the state of Virginia, And the 757, we want to feel like we're the best option not only in the state, but also in the country, where they can achieve all their hopes and dreams here."