EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa. – Long before he patrolled the Beaver Stadium sideline looking for a playful post-touchdown punch to deliver to his offensive coordinator, James Franklin was a graduate assistant tasked with a not so glamorous job.
“He’d go to the dorms and stock the soda machines,” said Franklin’s college roommate and longtime friend, Mike Santella. “He’d see the kids that he was coaching going to lunch and he’s stocking the machines. … He had all these little side jobs just to get himself a place to sleep and I specifically remember that.”
Franklin’s soda machine days were at Kutztown University, where he was a graduate assistant in 1995, but the town that left an indelible mark on the Nittany Lions’ head coach is 160 miles east of State College.
East Stroudsburg University is the place where an 18-year-old Neshaminy High School graduate studied the intricacies of the sport he aimed to perfect while picking up life lessons and valuable resources. It’s where Franklin came back to serve as a graduate assistant, and it's where he can still retreat on rare occasions to reconvene with old college teammates and friends.
Here at Rudy’s Tavern, down the street from Franklin’s alma mater, is the bar he still swings by during his occasional drives across the state. With six booths lining the wall and the original cash register still at the center, it’s the old hangout Franklin referenced many times since his arrival at Penn State, the same local spot where, months after he was hired, he took all of the Nittany Lions’ staffers for pork roll and cheese sandwiches during the coaches caravan.
“What you see now with James, you saw 20, 25, years ago,” said Santella, who still makes monthly visits to hang out with the Franklin family in State College. Santella is in his 20th year as an assistant coach at East Stroudsburg. “He was a very energetic guy, life of the party, everybody knew him and he just had this huge personality. He had a ton of charisma. The same guy you see now was the same guy back then and he really has not forgotten where he came from.”
This community hasn’t forgotten Franklin, either. One is just as likely to find someone seated at Rudy’s wearing a Penn State class ring and a blue and white ballcap as to hear a story about the man.
The town is full of tales about the mobile quarterback with the special leadership skills who was impressive enough as an undergraduate student that his former psychology professor still thinks Franklin could’ve ended up working at his private practice had the whole football thing not worked out. He likely would’ve found success there too, the department head said.
“I actually joke with James now, because dealing with all of the high level football players he deals with, he probably has to use more psychology than I do on a regular basis, and I’m a practicing psychologist,” said Tony Drago, the head of East Stroudsburg’s psychology department. Franklin still keeps in contact with Drago, including exchanging texts on game days.
“People were just drawn to him,” Drago recalled. “Many of the leadership skills that you see now occurred while he was here.”
A Penn State football helmet autographed by Franklin with the words ‘We Are’ next to his signature sits in a case off to the side of the bar, along with Pabst Blue Ribbon cans and various U.S. Marines Corps license plates. At a place that serves $2 beers and the cholesterol feast known as the Super – a bacon-wrapped hot dog with cheese in the center – the helmet is hardly the main attraction. Even a picture of the bar’s namesake, Rudy, is framed on the beam above the bar where the original owner has his arms crossed holding a fishing pole and sporting a trucker-style hat.
The football helmet is a subtle reminder of the community that impacted Franklin, and it might also serve as a reminder to the patrons at Rudy’s that the highest-paid public employee in Pennsylvania is proud of a foundation he established in this blue-collar town, even if some of the locals still can’t wrap their head around the head coach’s salary.
"Anybody tell you they're paying their football coach too much?" said one of the bar’s elderly patrons as he walked past the autographed helmet and toward the back door. At this point, the ink on Franklin’s six-year, $34.7 million contract extension signed in August was barely dry. “That’s a lot of money.”
So far, Franklin has been worth every penny.
Much of what led to Franklin’s success at Penn State started on this campus 25 years ago. Drago uses that as a little recruiting pitch to prospective psychology students and football coach Denny Douds, now in his 44th season as head coach at East Stroudsburg and 52nd overall there, still smiles about it.
No one could’ve predicted it’d end up exactly like this with the Pennsylvania native in his fourth season as the Nittany Lions’ head coach and with No. 2 Penn State undefeated and pushing for a shot at the College Football Playoff, just a few years removed from NCAA sanctions. Sure, they all knew Franklin would be good at something, seemingly anything he did, because of his passion and drive – the two traits Franklin said are both his greatest strengths and his greatest weaknesses – but this timeframe exceeded even the most optimistic expectations.
Still, the man who said last season he wanted his staff to appreciate and celebrate their victories more – even if it’s only for a matter of hours – is always looking ahead to his next challenge.
“It’s not like he sits back and smells the roses,” said Douds, Franklin’s college coach. “He’s here one day and he’s across the state the next day. He’s down in Virginia the next day and the other day he might be in Texas or Florida. He works at it. What he’s got he’s earned and he’s earned it the right way.”
In many ways Franklin’s path to Penn State isn’t all that different than some of the blue collar workers who visit his favorite East Stroudsburg bar. Like the local business owner trying to stay afloat with six storefront windows to decorate across the street while trying to keep up with online sales, the football coach has done his share of struggling, sacrificing and grinding through the coaching ranks to arrive at this point.
Much like the two friends stopping in for beers after a Monday night tennis match to wash their cares away, Franklin can still pick up where he left off when he returns to this town.
“Wherever he goes, he’s the head football coach at Penn State, except in one room, and that room is upstairs in my office,” Douds said.
The Warriors’ 76 year-old head coach also mentored Lions’ defensive coordinator Brent Pry, a "firecracker" who "always had a smile on his face with this look of, 'What can I get into next?' " Douds fondly recalled.
Pry’s father, Jim, coached for 11 seasons at East Stroudsburg.
“I don’t care if he’s sitting in this chair, the line coach of Notre Dame is in this chair, the guy who spent 13 years with the New York Giants who is now down at Jacksonville, he’s in the next chair – they have all those particular titles, but not in the office,” Douds said. “They’re another one of the gang, so they get busted the same as everyone else. That’s OK, too. It’s kind of a sanctuary.”
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Douds will never forget reporting back to the rest of East Stroudsburg’s coaching staff and proudly telling them he found the team a quarterback from Neshaminy High School.
" 'Well, how many times did he throw the ball?' " Douds recalled of his conversation with a colleague. “I said, '38.' He said, 'He threw the ball 38 times in one game?' I said, 'No. He threw the ball 38 times in the season!' He said, 'Are you nuts? What are you doing recruiting a kid who throws the ball 38 times per season?' I said, 'He’s a heck of an athlete.' "
Douds won that argument as East Stroudsburg offered Franklin a scholarship, going all-in on the wishbone quarterback whose scrambling ability quickly won Douds over. To this day, Douds still calls Franklin the best scrambling quarterback to ever play in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, but what continues to impress him is the respect Franklin earned from his teammates and how, 25-plus years later, Franklin still returns to alumni functions and stays connected.
Every year, East Stroudsburg’s alums, known as the Old Hats, return for the spring game and when Franklin promised his teammates he’d be there after moving back to Pennsylvania, sure enough he was. There was also the time last October during the Lions' bye week when Franklin was inducted into East Stroudsburg's Hall of Fame and Franklin was on campus in the morning but had a busy slate of afternoon recruiting to do in other states.
It was homecoming, but Douds didn’t expect Franklin to wrap up his recruiting trip in Virginia early and make a trip back to campus for East Stroudsburg’s football game that night. Who would?
“I’m on the sidelines, I look down and there’s James,” Douds said with a smile. “I’m saying, ‘What are you doing?’ He gave me one of those grins and a thumbs-up and people started recognizing him. He took time out to say hello, shake hands. I mean, come on, he didn’t have to do that. … That’s James. He knew some of his friends came up for the Hall of Fame induction and would stick around for the game, and that’s what the essence of the game is about. You’re teammates for four or five years, but you’re a team for the rest of your life. He gets that.”
In many ways, spending an afternoon in Douds’ office is like talking with Franklin. They both speak of handbooks on their program’s philosophy that have been written and rewritten throughout the years. They both like to blast college football fight songs during their practice, a detail Douds beams about, recalling the first time he heard that his pupil woke his players up to the Penn State fight song during camp, much like Douds does to his players during camp.
Neither one lacks energy or enthusiasm, either.
“If you don’t enjoy coaching and you can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning and go make a difference some place, then there’s I-80 out here and it goes both ways,” Douds said. “Go someplace else. Don’t be here. There’s no anchors tied to anybody.”
Both Douds and Franklin have programs rooted in family, one where Douds said he aimed to build a program where mothers and fathers would think of him just like an extension of their family. Franklin – citing his 105 sons and two daughters – does the same.
It’s also why Douds invited his former quarterback to live with him and his wife when Franklin accepted a graduate assistantship back at East Stroudsburg in 1996, the only time Franklin ever helped coach defense.
“The old story goes we’d sit on the back deck and eat Klondikes and talk about the world’s problems,” Douds said.
They also talked a lot about program philosophies. Even now, when Franklin returns to campus to visit Douds, he’s in his old coach's office, up on the board, diagramming plays. Usually in the audience there is another graduate assistant or two listening to Franklin. It’s another branch off the Denny Douds coaching tree.
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During Franklin’s fourth season at Penn State, one would be hard-pressed to find a football fan in the State College community who doesn’t have his or her story to share about the Lions’ head coach.
Countless selfies fill the Internet with the coach striking his now obligatory No. 1 pose – a gesture that’s more about leading a championship lifestyle than being tops in the Associated Press poll. When Franklin is out and about, whizzing and ripping around the football-crazed college town on his golf cart, everyone wants his or her moment with the man.
“In the entire time I’ve known him, he’s never turned down an autograph and never turned down a picture, and I mean ever,” Santella, Franklin's college roommate, said. “He could be in the middle of a steak dinner and he’s gonna pose for a selfie.”
It’s that charisma that first endeared Santella to Franklin. Watching him interact with everyone – from Franklin's fraternity brothers at Phi Sigma Kappa to the likes of college football royalty – the man locks in on them, and for however long Franklin has their attention he makes them feel like they're the most important person in the room.
"He was not one of your frat guys per se,” Santella said with a laugh. "He certainly did not use it for the party scene, he did not do that, but I think he was looking at that back then for something for his resume and to network."
And during the numerous leadership seminars and coaching stops from James Madison to Washington State, to Idaho State, Maryland, Green Bay, Kansas State, Maryland, Vanderbilt and Penn State, the two roommates would call one another before and after job interviews, sometimes multiple times per day.
They still laugh and argue about anything and everything. Franklin always has the power to win the argument, which still makes both of them laugh. Visits to the Franklin home often end with Santella and Franklin playing with Franklin's two daughters and staying in and eating dinner.
These meals don't include pork roll and cheese sandwiches like they used to back at Rudy's, but hearing Franklin laugh and seeing the same big personality that he's always had reminds Santella that his friend hasn't changed.
Franklin isn't stocking soda machines anymore, but rather living out a lifelong dream.
"It’s funny. I talked about that with my wife and have a couple people I discuss that with. The people I’m closest with say, and looking at myself, I don’t think I’ve changed at all,” Franklin said. “I think I’ve grown, just as everybody grows, and I plan to continue growing for the next 50 years. I hope in year 49, I’m not the same as I am in year 50. I think the biggest thing is understanding Penn State better: Understanding our fans, understanding our history, understanding our region, understanding our players.
"I don’t think I’ve changed at all."
