James Franklin and Paul Finebaum got a little testy in a recent interview over Franklin’s recruiting at Penn State.

The Nittany Lions have the No. 24 class in 247 Sports’ composite team rankings , and a number of those recruits originally committed to Franklin at Vanderbilt.

Franklin hasn’t been afraid to say he and his staff that carried over spent years developing relationships with those players, and that recruits often commit to coaches. But while on Finebaum’s radio show, the host kept pushing Franklin on the issue. The coach stuck to his guns. Here’s a transcript of the back-and-forth. They talked over each other a few times.

Franklin: “A lot of times, when coaches move, they move from one job to another, and the guys they recruited at the last school don’t fit athletically, socially or academically at the next school. That wasn’t the case here in this situation.”

Finebaum: “You don’t feel badly that you angered a lot of people who supported you and who embraced you? Instead of saying, ‘I’m not going to recruit them,’ you just went ahead and did it anyway.”

“I feel very, very comfortable with what we did professionally. It bothers me and I’m upset that people are angry, but I think that’s part of it. That’s going to happen. I understand that, and they have the right to be upset and angry. Again, I’m comfortable with what we did professionally, how we did it and we’re moving forward here at Penn State and are excited about our future.”

"To me, it seems like you’ve brought on more criticism when all you had to do was say, ‘I’m going to separate that and move on. I’ve got a great opportunity at Penn State. If I miss a couple of players, I miss them.’ You’re just saying that doesn’t matter to you? You had to get players and time was short, right?"

“No, what I’m saying is it does. The relationships and all those things do matter to me.”

"But my point is, Coach Franklin, you still did it though. Your words sound good, but you still went ahead and move players to Penn State you had gotten commitments from at Vanderbilt while you were being paid by Vanderbilt University."

“I’m at Penn State now.”

"I know where you are, but these are players you recruited, and the moment you left, you clearly, to me at least, don’t feel bad you moved them somewhere else. You’re saying they wanted to leave."

“I’m very, very comfortable with what we did professionally, because, now, it’s my job to make sure we do everything we can for Penn State and to be successful.”

"You don’t think that sends a bad message to your players in the future, particularly at a school like Penn State, where honor and commitment really matter?"

“That’s what I said. You sit down with these young men…”

"No, it seems to me you’re saying you got a new job, you’re working at Penn State and what difference does it make what you said a week earlier? You’re now at Penn State and forget about it, 'I’m moving these players on.' I’m not hearing anything from you other than you feel badly that someone’s upset."

“That’s exactly right. I feel badly that people are upset. We want to do the best thing for Penn State, and that’s what we’re doing. Obviously, you have an opinion, and that’s great, but we have an opinion as well and couldn’t be happier about being at Penn State and what we’re building here. There’s no doubt about it.”

"Good luck. Thanks, coach."

You can listen to the interview at the 30-minute mark here.