James Franklin 2015

Penn State head coach James Franklin pauses as new offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead answers a question at Beaver Stadium on Dec. 16.

(PennLive/Joe Hermitt)

When James Franklin was about to be named head football coach at Penn State almost exactly two years ago, I wrote that, had the decision been up to me, I'd have gone with a different guy from Nashville - Mike Munchak. It wasn't just about his knowhow as perhaps the best offensive line coach in football. It was about who fit at Penn State and who didn't.

I think fit is a big deal and I still do. I think it's the reason people are patient with one man and not so much with another. I think it's the reason one leader is embraced and the other is tolerated.

Not every coach is right for every job. And in a situation and place where patience is both necessary and at a premium, I think you're seeing that theory play out. As Franklin enters his third year of what should be a 5-year rebuilding job, he probably won't be allowed that much slack.

Why? People say they don't like his playcalling, aren't happy with the results of his two years of beating those he should and not those he shouldn't. I think it runs deeper than that.

I think they don't consider him one of them.

For well-established reasons surrounding the NCAA sanctions, I think it's unfair to expect too much more than what's been delivered at Penn State at this point. But Franklin is paying as much for his style as his results. Maybe it's too late to remedy, but he needs to realize that.

Anyway, I never thought he was a proper fit for Penn State and what most of its fans want in a coach. I knew about him from some pub he received at Vanderbilt and had studied him well before he came here, partly because of his Pennsylvania roots.

This is a place where people value the walk over the talk. They would rather have a guy who keeps his head down and teaches than a guy who has his head up looking for a camera lens and a microphone and a customer coming through the door.

There are places where that sort of showroom floor manager is needed. They are outposts where tradition is thin and the clientele shallow. Where you need a salesman to pitch the sizzle as much as the steak, a carnival barker to attract the curious.

It works the other way, too. The moment I heard button-down-Oxford-cloth Al Golden was leaving Temple for Miami several years back, I thought: Wait a minute... Huh? Golden was never embraced in Coral Gables by the fickle fans, light on devoted alumni, heavy on attraction to shiny objects. His results suffered I think not just because of the Nevin Shapiro chaos exposed shortly after his arrival but because he was a spectacularly bad fit for Miami.

Another example: Several years ago, I was in Tucson for an NCAA tournament sub-regional and took a jog around the University of Arizona's gorgeous campus. By chance, I happened upon the school's football stadium.

Now, I above anyone abhor the revenue race going on in major college athletics, the tens of millions being poured into sports facilities to prove commitment to major-sport recruits, often at the expense of garden-variety students.

But the facts of the game are what they are. And Arizona is a major state university in a Power Five conference. I was stunned at how run-down and dowdy the stadium looked. And the gates were wide open. Anyone could walk in. (Another throwback to a simpler time.) Which I did. I walked in and looked around and stood there with not a soul in the place and thought: Boy, this is not a football school, is it?

And that's the truth. At Arizona, football has always taken a backseat to basketball and maybe even baseball. The football program, though shepherded along respectably through the 1980s and '90s by a capable coach named Dick Tomey, was never the equal of Lute Olson's star-studded basketball factory. I know they have the Bear Down slogan and all that. But, relatively speaking, people just don't get all that excited about football there.

The football program needed a salesman as much as a coach. And that's what it found the next year in Rich Rodriguez. When UA hired him a year after his firing at Michigan, I thought: Now, that's where RichRod belongs - a place where 7-6 isn't a disaster, where he can convert the populace and has time to build without the burden of an austere, tradition-laden institution like Michigan where he decidedly didn't fit.

Michigan, I've always said, has an awful lot in common with Penn State. And James Franklin is, in many ways, PSU's RichRod, a fish not necessarily out of water, just in the wrong pond.

The fans here don't need to be sold the product; they are already willing buyers. They only need to be shown quality. Not necessarily flashy features, just durability and integrity of design.

They don't need empty slogans like "Dominate the State" and "Unrivaled" and all the rest of the conveyor belt of BS that Franklin has delivered to their eyes and ears like the largest Hyundai and Kia dealer in all of the Tri-State Area because James Franklin simply will not be undersold!

No, all they want is the steak. And they are spoiled rotten because they've had great steak for decades.

So, if I had a little advice for Franklin as he enters what looks like a critical third season, without his ace DC and breaking in a new QB, I'd just say: Tone it down some, bud. We get the enthusiasm and that's great. Just be yourself, keep the real part of you whatever that is, stoke your inner coach, teach hard and discard the public sales pitch.

Nobody needs it. And it's not altering your fate anyway. Only the results will.