There’s no sugarcoating this: As Penn State coach, James Franklin has an abysmal 4-19 record against opponents ranked in the Associated Press top 10 – and is in games when his team is also in the top 10. at just 3:10.

It’s a brand that saw a small but significant boost with Penn State’s stunning 31-14 College Football Playoff quarterfinal win over No. 8 seed Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl, but with each step forward in the CFP There is a greater opportunity in the round – and increasingly loud doubters about Franklin’s ability to beat the best.

As the runner-up in the Big Ten and the No. 6 seed in the College Football Playoff, the narrative around Penn State was that they had arguably the easiest path to the national title – a home game against overmatched No. 11 seed SMU, followed by a matchup against Mountain West Conference champion and No. 3 seed Boise State. The Nittany Lions outscored their first two playoff opponents by a combined score of 69-24.

Now Franklin is just two wins away from the school’s first national championship since the 1986 season, but to win it, he’ll have to do something that has eluded him for most of his career: beat a top-five team. Penn State is 1-14 against AP Top 5 teams, with its lone win coming against No. 2 Ohio State in 2016. By comparison, former coach Nick Saban (24-11 at Alabama), former coach Urban Meyer (6-2 at Ohio State) and Georgia coach Kirby Smart (11-7) all have a winning record against AP Top -5 opponents to show ESPN research. Ohio State coach Ryan Day, on the other hand, is 5-6 against them, and former Penn State coach Joe Paterno was 3-12 in his first 15 games against AP top-five teams at Penn State.

Franklin is also 0-5 against teams ranked in the top five by the CFP Selection Committee, losing those games by an average of 20.4 points, according to ESPN Research. The Nittany Lions face Notre Dame (No. 3 AP/No. 5 CFP) on Thursday in a College Football Playoff semifinal in the Capital One Orange Bowl (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), which is undoubtedly Franklin’s biggest game Career.

Franklin “understands” fans’ frustration. He declined to comment for this story, but said this after a 20-13 loss to No. 4 Ohio State on Nov. 2: “Nobody looks in the mirror harder than me. I’ve said this before, but 99% of it. “The programs across college football would die to do what we were able to do in our time here.”

Despite its struggles against top teams, Franklin enters the Orange Bowl with a 101-41 record and is 64-33 in the Big Ten over the last decade in State College. That includes five top-10 finishes, a Big Ten title (2016) and regular appearances in New Year’s Six bowl games. Under Franklin, Penn State joins Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State as the only programs to finish in the selection committee’s final top 12 in at least seven of the last nine seasons.

His contract runs for six years and he has the support of his government.

“I’m not going to believe the criticism because I see it differently,” said Penn State athletic director Patrick Kraft, who was hired at Penn State on July 1, 2022 after serving two years as athletic director at the Boston college. “When I got here I was really surprised at just the infrastructure and how everything was set up, how backwards we really were. Yes, we are all judged by wins and losses, but I tell you, the culture behind it.” The structure and the young men he brings in and the graduates are second to none.

“You don’t look behind the curtain as a fan or just as a viewer,” Kraft said, “and when you step behind the curtain, for me, culture and family come pouring out. That’s actually how it’s structured, but that.” The infrastructure behind it didn’t fit that culture and we still have a long way to go. So yeah, we want to win every single game – that’s the expectation for every program, but seeing what he’s done and that consistency is what’s remarkable to me.”

As a former Big Ten head coach who led Indiana for seven seasons, first-year Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Allen has studied the Nittany Lions from the inside. He scheduled a game against Franklin and is now trying to help Franklin win its first national title. Allen heard Franklin’s critics when he was in Indiana, and he heard them again as Franklin’s associate.

“Now that I’m here and I see behind the scenes and the day-to-day, I see what a bulldog he is – that’s the word I use – he’s a bulldog for the details and the small things and just keeping track of everything,” Allen said. “For me this criticism is not fair, but until you win these big games it will be there. And I think as coaches we all understand that.”

What Franklin has accomplished so far is often overshadowed by what he hasn’t accomplished. According to ESPN Research, when Franklin won his 100th game at Penn State in the first round against SMU, he became the fourth FBS coach to win 100 games at a single school since moving to State College in 2014 , along with Dabo Swinney at Clemson (129 since 2014), Nick Saban at Alabama (127 from 2014-23) and Kirby Smart at Georgia (105 since 2016).

However, there is one thing that sets Franklin apart from the rest of the group: multiple national titles.

“We’re not avoiding expectations,” Kraft said. “As the head coach at Penn State, he is under a lot of scrutiny and he handles it very well internally. He and I are partners in this.”

A current Big Ten head coach said expectations for Franklin should reflect the resources he has to work with.

“Ryan Day has been to championships, Clemson has been to championships, Bama won them, Michigan won them,” he said. “If Penn State’s expectation is that they should have at least played for championships in the 10 years of his tenure, then he’s not successful, right? If their expectation is, ‘Hey, we just got him a 10-win title.’ Team, January 1st Bowl team, at the bottom of the blue bloods list in terms of resources – which I don’t know – then he meets the expectations of a 10-win guy. You’re a blue blood, you become with resources equipped like Clemson, like Michigan, like Ohio State, like the people we’re comparing them to, because it’s not fair to have that expectation when he doesn’t have the resources.”

Kraft said much of Penn State’s growth under Franklin has occurred behind the scenes, such as working to build the NIL budget, salaries for assistant coaches, stadium renovations and improvements for Penn State student-athletes in all sports , such as mental health, nutrition and travel – all things that ultimately contribute to winning a national title but happen off the field.

“You have to build the infrastructure in-house,” Kraft said. “The thing that I think has really improved is giving it – and all of our sports – the opportunity to do the things internally that they need to do to get to championship level.”

A second Big Ten head coach said the most noticeable improvements at Penn State and Franklin this year were two things: the hiring of two proven coordinators in Allen and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, and Franklin’s overall development as a head coach in certain situations.

“James has, in my opinion, surrounded himself with perhaps the best coordinator combination in our league,” the source said. “Now for the first time James is able to take charge of games and do the things he is good at. As a head coach he’s on a different level.”

“I get it, I get the narrative,” the coach said, “but that’s probably based on the past rather than the present. Even he has a better understanding of how to use his players. He was at Penn. “So when he gets into these games where he’s the underdog, you not only have to play differently, but you have to develop a different strategy. And when he played that fake punt against Minnesota. .. I don’t think he’s ever had to do that before, and he kind of realizes that I have to do that to win this game based on my talent alone.

Kotelnicki said Franklin doesn’t get enough credit for being as consistently good as he is. From 2016 to 2019, Franklin led Penn State to 42 wins, the most in program history in the Big Ten era, and a school-record 28 conference wins.

“It’s really hard to win, and it’s really hard to do it over a decade like he did here as a head coach,” Kotelnicki said in the Nittany Lions’ locker room after their win against Boise State. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with some pretty good head coaches in my life. He’s certainly in first class company. So I don’t know if (the win against Boise State) will silence the critics – probably not.” .. But I hope things calm down for him a little bit. He deserves a little, ‘Okay, okay, I think he’s fine.'”

Penn State’s defense was more than okay in the Fiesta Bowl win over Boise State, and it will need to play at a championship level for Franklin to improve its record and advance against the Irish. According to ESPN Research, defense is at the heart of Penn State’s problem in previous top-10 matchups. The Nittany Lions have allowed 31 points per game and 422 total yards in these matchups. The defense also allowed 190 rushing yards per game in top-10 games under Franklin.

Against Boise State and Ashton Jeanty, the Heisman runner-up was held to a season-low 104 rushing yards. That trend needs to continue: Notre Dame has relied on its running game this season, finishing in the top five in yards per rush and rushing touchdowns.

Penn State is playing its third AP Top 5 match of the season, losing its previous two games to Ohio State and Oregon. The program’s problems also go deeper than Franklin: The Nittany Lions haven’t won a top-five matchup against No. 4 Arizona since 1999.

“You just have to be good at blocking it out, but also not be afraid to look for ways to make change,” Allen said. “That’s what I see from him: ‘Hey, what can we do?’ And there’s this constant evaluation of how we train, the game plans, when something isn’t going a certain way. I think it’s just a matter of time.”