Penn State fired James Franklin to join college football's elite -- instead, it became a cautionary tale

For all the frustrated fans begging their favorite school to fire their coach immediately, take a gander over at Penn State.

Under first-year coach Matt Campbell, Penn State is 3-2. The Nittany Lions, which began the season ranked No. 18, have lost their last two games to Wisconsin and Northwestern. Already 12th in the Big Ten, Penn State has No. 19 USC this weekend and then a similarly slumping Michigan team the week after. Northwestern outgained Penn State 506-291 in its 34-13 win last Friday.

James Franklin doesn't look so bad now, does he?

It was almost exactly a year ago that Penn State AD Pat Kraft fired Franklin. Penn State pulled the plug on Oct. 12 after a loss to … Northwestern dropped the program to 3-3. Franklin had guided Penn State to a College Football Playoff semifinal the previous season, but Penn State grew sick of his antics after 12 seasons and believed it could do better. Penn State wanted a coach more capable of winning a national championship.

There are lessons in that.

The obvious is that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. There comes a point where a fanbase and/or an administration gets sick enough of what they have that any alternative sounds better.

For all his faults, Franklin wasn't a bad football coach. That is evident in the fact that he already has Virginia Tech (4-1), a controversial play away from a 5-0 record in his debut season down in Blacksburg.

But even if you believed it was time to move on from Franklin -- and there's a justifiable argument that it may have been -- you still need to land the plane with the right guy to follow him and take over the program. And from the moment Penn State fired Franklin, there was considerable industry skepticism that the school was going to be able to land the caliber of coach that justified its decision.

Early options like Nebraska's Matt Rhule, Texas A&M's Mike Elko and Indiana's Curt Cignetti quickly took themselves out of consideration. Despite fan speculation, Alabama's Kalen DeBoer was never a serious option.

A messy process

The longer it dragged on, the worse it looked for Kraft and Penn State. Firing your head coach midseason can give you a jump on the competition, but it can also invite a lot of cooks into the kitchen. More and more people will insert themselves into the process, from current and former players to boosters to trustees. It can make an already fraught process even more unwieldy and ripe for disaster.

As the process looks more like a mess, it makes recruits and current players antsy. Kraft's decision to pull the plug in mid-October turned into a recruiting disaster for the Nittany Lions. Twenty-four recruits decommitted from Penn State -- yes, you read that number correctly -- that turned a class ranked inside the top 20 into one that finished outside the top 60. Penn State signed the third-worst class in the Big Ten and nationally finished behind programs such as Syracuse, Rutgers, Appalachian State, Temple and, yes, Franklin's Virginia Tech Hokies. In fact, 11 former Penn State commitments followed Franklin to VT.

Penn State kicked the tires on a number of prospective candidates, including then-James Madison coach Bob Chesney, former New York Giants coach Brian Daboll and Louisville coach Jeff Brohm. (Penn State coach Bob Chesney, a Pennsylvania native, would have a nice feel to it these days). As time progressed, there was increasing buzz that Kraft had locked into a mystery candidate who was later revealed to be BYU's Kalani Sitake.

Penn State thought it had Sitake on board, only for him to reverse course and stay home after the Cougars made the Big 12 Championship Game.

Sitake is a very good football coach, one who again has BYU in the playoff race this season, but even before he reneged, there were questions about the fit in Happy Valley. Born in Tonga, Sitake played at BYU, and the only times he left the state of Utah during his coaching career were to Eastern Arizona and Oregon State. It would have been a major culture shock for Sitake, and there were questions about whether his recruiting would have translated at Penn State.

Late decision

As internal and external pressure ratcheted up on Kraft to deliver a coach, the PSU AD set his sights on Iowa State's Campbell. It looked like a wise late-process pivot for Kraft, as the narrative around his 54-day marathon coaching search suggested Penn State was being turned down left and right.

Campbell had been successful for years at a non-traditional powerhouse with far fewer resources than Penn State. He had been picky about the kind of job that would make him leave Ames, turning down interest from lesser Power 4 schools over the years. Penn State made sense as the job worth jumping for.

The timing and the loss of so many recruits and current players to the transfer portal necessitated that Campbell bring 24 Iowa State players with him to State College. Bringing quarterback Rocco Becht made obvious sense but there were questions from the jump about how a roster full of players from an 8-4 Iowa State team would fare in the Big Ten.

It turns out, not great so far.

There is still plenty of time for Campbell to get it going at Penn State. He's proven himself to be a good coach, but one who didn't have to deal with the benefits and drawbacks of managing an expensive roster while at Iowa State. In the worst-case scenario, the man who flourished under the lesser expectations in Ames can't measure up to the far loftier ones in Happy Valley. Seven and eight-win seasons (which he had six of) buy you job security at Iowa State. They get you fired at Penn State.

Recruiting is improving -- Penn State currently has the 20th-ranked recruiting class, according to 247Sports, though that is still only good for the seventh-best Big Ten class. The back-half of the schedule looks more manageable, though if PSU is getting blown out against Northwestern, everything feels like it's on the table.

The Penn State disaster serves as a warning to every athletic director considering firing a football coach this cycle. First, are you sure you want to do that? And, secondly, what's the benefit of doing it right now?

Nearly a year after Penn State stunned the sport when it fired Franklin, it doesn't seem like a coincidence that no Power Four has pulled the plug on its coach thus far. The benefit of racing to fire a coach to get a head start ahead of early signing day and the transfer portal has its limits.

In a world where there is seemingly none, PSU's experience has highlighted that patience can be a virtue when firing a coach.