Penn State head coach James Franklin is entering his 12th season at the helm of the program, and he may be facing the most pressure yet after bringing Penn State to the cusp of an appearance in the national championship game last season. The Nittany Lions are predicted to be a Big Ten heavyweight with a legitimate national title aspirations as they look to take the challenging next step as a program Franklin has been harping about for years. No matter what you think about Franklin entering the 2025 season, the numbers do back up the idea that he is among the best in the game. And according to Bill Connelly of ESPN, the numbers have Franklin ranked as one of the four best coaches in college football in 2025.
Connelly’s mathematical formulas, used to rank just about everything you can imagine in college football, have calculated Franklin to be the fourth-best active college football coach for the upcoming college football season. Two ranked ahead of him, Ohio State’s Ryan Day (no. 1) and Georgia’s Kirby Smart (no. 3), have national championships to their name. The other, Josh Heupel of Tennessee (no. 2), is questionable if not laughable. Even if you rank Heupel ahead of Franklin, is he really the second-best coach in the sport? Probably not.
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While a small handful of active head coaches currently own national title rings (Clemson’s Dabo Swinney joins Day and Smart and may have the Tigers ready to roar back to the national title conversation soon enough after year’s ACC championship and playoff appearance), the tenure of Franklin is a bit of a complicated one when determining his success. Penn State has consistently been one of the winningest programs in the country since his arrival, but Franklin’s jarring record against top-ranked teams is an unavoidable narrative that is increasingly more difficult to combat even for Franklin’s biggest defenders.
Arguing that Franklin has been a bust for a head coach is ill-advised as he has taken Penn State to a Big Ten title and wins in the Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl (twice), and Cotton Bowl, and has helped[d produce some incredible talent for the NFL. But it is also fair to suggest Franklin has failed to getting Penn State to the elite level the program is striving for. After so many years and shortcomings against the same hurdles in the same fashion, the case has been made.
But maybe in 2025, Franklin will finally break free of that narrative once and for all.
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This article originally appeared on Nittany Lions Wire: ESPN formula ranks James Franklin one of best college football coaches
