SCOTTSDALE, Arizona | Penn State’s James Franklin has lobbied recently for college football to elect a commissioner to oversee the game’s future. At Fiesta Bowl media day Sunday, Franklin nominated Nick Saban for the job.
“I think if we made that decision — Nick will probably call me tonight and say, ‘Don’t do this,’ — but I think he’s the obvious choice, right?” Franklin said.
Penn State meets Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Eve, where the teams will play for a spot in the College Football Playoff semifinals. But even the playoffs haven’t been immune to bowl-season opt-out decisions. Former Penn State quarterback Beau Pribula entered the transfer portal before the Nittany Lions’ first playoff game vs. SMU to begin interviewing with new teams. Pribula eventually chose Missouri, where he will enroll in early January.
After Pribula announced his intention (or “impossible decision,” as he termed it) to enter the portal, Franklin backed the quarterback completely and issued a challenge to college football itself. Franklin joined the chorus of coaches who can’t understand why the season’s most valuable property (the playoff) coincides on the calendar with college football’s version of free agency (the transfer portal).
“We’ve got problems in college football,” Franklin said before Penn State played SMU. “And I can give you my word, Beau Pribula did not want to leave our program and he did not want to leave our program until the end of the season. But the way the portal is and the timing of it and the way our team is playing — and when you play the position of quarterback and there’s only one spot and those spots are filling up — he felt like he was put in a no-win situation, and I agree with him.”
At Fiesta Bowl media day, Franklin expressed his concerns about the game again but also offered some prospective solutions. One was hiring Saban, the former Alabama head coach and current ESPN analyst, as the commissioner of college football.
“I think one of the most important things that we can do is, let’s get a commissioner of college football that is waking up every single morning and going to bed every single night making decisions that are in the best interests of college football,” Franklin said. “I think Nick Saban would be the obvious choice. … I think there’s some other really good candidates out there. But that would be a very, very important step moving forward to come up with some solutions and do what’s best for our sport.”
Franklin, in his 11th season at Penn State and 14th as a head coach, offered other recommendations. He suggested that conferences end their championship games (Penn State played Oregon in the Big Ten title game this year) as part of a process that concerns itself less with finances. He also reiterated his long-standing issue that some conferences play nine games (Big Ten) while others play eight (SEC).
“People don’t want to hear it from coaches, but I think if every decision we make is based on money, then we’re headed in the wrong direction,” Franklin said. “We should be doing what’s best for college football and the student-athletes. To me, getting rid of the conference championship games would help with that. Because right now, not everybody is playing a conference championship game anyway. When you have a committee sitting in a room trying to compare apples to apples or oranges to oranges, it’s hard to do that when not everybody is playing under the same model. Get rid of the conference championship game. That will shorten the season and help with the window a little bit.
“The other thing that I think is very, very important is that everybody is playing the same number of conference games. Whether that’s eight, nine, whatever the number is, everybody is playing the same. Again, the committee can compare apples to apples.”
Lastly, Franklin suggested spending more time and effort to realign college football’s calendar with the general academic calendar.
“Let’s start [the season] a week earlier,” he said. “If you can take some of the stress off of the academic calendar -again, God forbid we talk about academics, right? That used to be every conversation started with academics, and that’s becoming less and less. Maybe I’m old-school and maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I still believe in the model.”
Penn State plays Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Eve at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Kickoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
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