Potential Head Coach Candidates to Replace James Franklin at Penn State 🤔🏈

Richard Johnsons joins CBS Sports HQ to break down the potential head coach candidates for the Penn State Nittany Lions.

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the NFL on CBS and Paramount+. Penn State an underdog at Iowa this weekend looking to avoid an zero four start to Big Ten play. But with the College Football Playoff off the table, it’s all about the future now at State College. Who is going to take over the reins of a program that’s been pretty open about saying it’s national championship or bust from now on? James Franklin fired. He got within one play of a title game last season, finishes tied for the second most wins in Penn State history. For more on the Penn State job opening, we bring in our college football reporter, Richard Johnson. It’s it’s still like right in the middle of the season. It’s October 15th. You’d expect that most of the candidates that they’d want to look at are in the middle of coaching their team and still have at least a month and a half to go. So what can Penn State ultimately do right now to try to get a jump on this? Yeah. Well, first and foremost on the field, you know, you’ve got an interim run right now where it’s kind of found money. You know it’s a situation where potentially Andy Kolinsky on offense, for instance, could have some razzle dazzle for Iowa on Saturday. You never know. But what I think is the most interesting thing about this Penn State vacancy is, quite frankly, this job has never been open in modern times. Joe Paterno took this job over in 1966, and it’s never been open in modern times under a normal circumstance. Obviously, Bill O’Brien took it in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, and James Franklin got it from Bill O’Brien when he went to the NFL with an interim athletic director and an interim president. So despite the fact that things are changing in college sports, obviously with the House settlement, etc. whoever the next coach is going to be is taking over a Penn State program that, frankly, for the first time probably ever in the modern history of the sport, is just kind of normal. Well, Matt Rhule has been the most talked about candidate given the fact that he’s an alum. He grew up there. He was in that state at temple where he got his start as a head coach. But outside of him, who are the realistic candidates for this opening? I think you’re going to see a lot of candidates that you may initially think are realistic. You’re going to see candidates of the platform of potentially Mike Elko at Penn State, potentially Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame. I’m not saying that those guys are legitimate candidates for the job. What I am saying is that Penn State is the caliber of job, and they just paid the amount of money that they did to get rid of James Franklin. Approximately $50 million over the next few years that if you’re Penn State, you don’t really have any other choice but to swing for the fences here. What Penn State is trying to do is something that is honestly pretty rare in college football. They’re trying to go from a nine and a half, ten ish win team to an 11.5 or 12 win ish team with a deep run in January. That is the expectation for whoever the next Penn State coach is. There are few and far between programs that have actually made that move. Georgia’s pretty much the biggest one that comes to mind when they got rid of Mark Richt in order to hire Kirby Smart, and obviously they leveled up as a program and finally got over the national championship hump that had hounded that program for so long. But as far as Penn State is trying to is concerned, they are trying to bridge a gap that you think is really close at hand. But it can be a really, really wide chasm. And the thing that’s kept them from from becoming that 1112 win national championship team is the fact that James Franklin wasn’t able to beat the top teams in the country. So when you think of Matt Rhule. Yeah, he’s a Penn State guy. He played there, but he’s two and 23 against ranked teams in his career. He’s never beaten a top ten team zero and 11. Is he sellable to that fan base that thinks it’s a national championship coach or bust at this point? Well, theoretically, if Penn State were to hire Matt Rhule, there is frankly a good vibes aspect here that comes when you hire somebody like Matt Rhule. Obviously he played there again. You know he’s been around the program, he knows the program. He’s got a great relationship with athletic director Pat Kraft. So I don’t think selling Matt Rhule is going to be a problem to this fan base one bit. I mean, Pat, Matt Rhule speaks the the language of Penn Staters more than probably anybody, conceivably, that Penn State could hire. I’m not a person who thinks you absolutely have to win the press conference, but Matt Rhule will if if Penn State goes that route. We talked about how this job is open for the first time in modern history, like really open with a with a sitting A.D. who’s looking to make a big splash. But this could be the craziest coaching cycle of all time, and we expect many more major jobs to open, potentially at Florida, potentially at Auburn. Is Penn State going to be the best job no matter what? Well, Penn State will absolutely have to go against potentially Florida, potentially Auburn and potentially Wisconsin as we move forward this season. Those are other high level jobs that that industry sources are pointing to that could potentially come open during this cycle. You know, me and my colleague Chris Hummer just did a story over at CBSSports.com just about what industry sources are saying about just how wild and crazy this cycle could get. Sources are expecting over 40 jobs to open, because the jobs that you see on your screen there, a lot of those are going to look to hire established head coaches that are already in a job. So you’ve got to think about the cascading effect. You know, there are different things that you can do to pass jobs like Florida and Auburn and Penn State. If Florida and Auburn were to come open to try to compare them, you know, obviously you think of somewhere like location and being in the SEC with Florida and Auburn is concerned. And then obviously the Big Ten is is a big conference in the power conferences that Penn State obviously has. It’s in its favor, I should say, as far as profile is concerned. So you can pass these jobs any which way you want. But at the end of the day, if Florida and Auburn are to open, it’s certainly going to be interesting calculus for a certain type of candidate. Richard, are there any coaches out there that there’s just no way, no matter what is offered at Penn State or Florida, that are just not leaving? We’ve heard Curt Cignetti, you know, his name being tossed about, but he’s in his mid 60s. He’s just starting to build it at Indiana and maybe he wins a title this year. He seems like a guy that might not make that jump. Are there others out there that just aren’t going to leave their current situations? Chris you know, it’s not. It’s my personal belief that Indiana will do whatever it takes to keep Curt Cignetti. It’s my personal belief that Indiana has a war chest to try to do it, but I don’t speak in absolutes in the coaching carousel right now, because in 2021, I watched the sitting coach of Notre Dame and the sitting coach of Oklahoma leave their jobs on their own volition to take new jobs. That happened in the same coaching cycle. So it can happen to anybody. Anybody can get it in the college football coaching carousel. All right, Richard Johnson with us as the Penn State job becomes the biggest job to open. But maybe by the end of things it won’t be. I know Florida Gator alums are hoping that might be the case with Billy Napier down there in Gainesville. You can hear Richard on the College Football Insiders podcast, very latest episode dives well deeper into this conversation about