ALTOONA, Pa. -- Maybe you've coached youth sports, where like 95 percent of your time on it is spent, you know, actually doing the sport -- practicing, game planning, coaching games.
Then there's junior high, high school or travel ball coaches, who again spend the vast majority of their time with a sport doing actual coaching stuff.
OK, so what about in college?
That's where we'll start this week's Friday top 5.
1. What percentage of time does a college football head coach actually spend on coaching?
It simply cannot be a very big number. As crazy as it seems, I can't imagine it being more than 5-10 percent.
The other 90 percent? Well, that's the CEO part of the job.
Let's say you're James Franklin. You've got more than 100 people on the Penn State football staff, including assistant coaches, analysts, support personnel, graduate assistants, consultants, interns, managers and numerous others involved in some capacity. You're in charge, basically, of most or all of them.
Any of you ever tried to be the boss of a 100-person company? The day-to-day operations alone would take you away from your primary responsibilities a good bit.
Being a college head coach nowadays probably means working on recruiting, in some form, for at least a little while each and every day for 365 days a year. Just so we're clear, no, recruiting does not count toward what we would call actual football coaching stuff. That's all people skills and planning.
OK, so what do I mean by actual football stuff then? In short, we're talking Xs and Os, game plans, depth charts, situational strategies, practicing, games -- you know, all the good stuff.
The kind of stuff that, when you start complaining and armchair quarterbacking about why you don't like Franklin or some other coach, you're really talking about.
That one questionable play call on third or fourth down that cost the game. That one goofy fake punt or fake field goal decision. That one poor timeout or clock management issues.
It would be great if head coaches could sit around all day doing THAT stuff. Just poring over game film, spending limitless time thinking about what he would do on this play or that play, designing plays to account for any situation and practicing the schemes 100 times with each and every player.
Yeah right.
The athletes only get to practice 20 hours a week, and only for parts of the year. For the vast majority of days throughout the year, the head coach really can't be involved in any way with the players on actual football stuff because it's against the rules.
A college head coach has to focus on and worry about NIL and the transfer portal pretty much every day. He has to have frequent meetings with all of his players to make sure they're all happy. He has to talk with parents of all the players. He has to make public appearances or speak to the media or go on PR trips representing the university. He has to lobby school officials for more resources. He has to gladhand boosters trying to raise money. Then there's various meetings, travel, endless emails and text messages. And on and on.
These coaches obviously are tremendously well paid, with Franklin making $8.5 million a year. So, whatever kind of work they have to do, they're really still grossly overpaid.
But the point is that, with so little focus on actual coaching and more on having to do tons of other stuff, the position of head coach has changed dramatically over the past 10-15 years.
Can you imagine Joe Paterno having to deal with all this other stuff such as NIL issues and constant transfer portal pressure?
It's enough to drive the football-crazed coaches out of college, to be honest.
Frankly, I'm surprised Jim Harbaugh is still at Michigan. He's had numerous opportunities to return to the NFL and to get away from all this craziness in college, and yet he remains with the Wolverines.
A guy like Bill O'Brien, he will absolutely love going back to the NFL as the Patriots' offensive coordinator. He's a football guy through and through, and the NFL allows coaches to focus much, much more on the actual football. That's one of the biggest reasons why O'Brien left Penn State in the first place after two seasons in 2013.
To his credit, Franklin is a tremendous CEO. I've said numerous times recently that Franklin might be one of the best CEO head coaches in the country because he excels at everything one needs to do with regards to all of that stuff.
Franklin is a terrific leader and representative for the Penn State football program and the university. And if he surrounds himself with smart, hard-working assistant coaches who excel in their jobs -- which he has done -- then the Lions can have the best of all worlds with regards to the coaching and CEO elements.
2. Football access coming up next week
Franklin will hold a press conference Tuesday to discuss recruiting and other stuff going on over the winter.
We also will get to hear from new wide receivers coach Marques Hagans, who will have his own introductory press conference.
And, a real bonus: Penn State will make a whole bunch of 2022 first-year players available to the media for the first time locally. All players were available at the Rose Bowl, per bowl regulations, so we've already heard from Drew Allar, Nicholas Singleton, Abdul Carter and some other freshmen. We'll get to catch up with those and others on Tuesday, so you can look for a bunch of stories coming up about the younger players.
3. Another tough one on tap for wrestling
No. 1 Penn State visits Ohio State on Friday night for a dual meet against the No. 4 Buckeyes, who are 11-1 overall and 5-0 in the Big Ten.
The Lions are coming off a thrilling win last weekend against No. 2 Iowa at the Bryce Jordan Center. The Buckeyes aren't the Hawkeyes, but they still have a tough lineup that could give Penn State some trouble. If there's an upset or two, this could be a very difficult meet.
Then again, the Lions have several of the very best wrestlers in the country at their weight class, and they should be able to roll past the Buckeyes in comfortable fashion.
Here's a look at the lineups for both teams, with synopsis from GoPSUSports:
The Penn State line-up features four freshmen and starts with freshman Gary Steen, who is 5-9 at 125. Roman Bravo-Young, ranked No. 1 at 133, is 10-0. Beau Bartlett, ranked No. 5 at 141 sports a 14-1 mark while freshman Shayne Van Ness is 11-3 and ranked No. 13 at 149. True freshman Levi Haines is 13-1 overall and ranked No. 9 at 157. Freshman Alex Facundo is 11-2 on the year and ranked No. 8 at 165. Carter Starocci is 11-0 and ranked No. 1 at 174, Aaron Brooks is 7-1 and ranked No. 1 at 184. Max Dean is 13-2 at 197 and ranked No. 4 while Greg Kerkvliet is 9-1 and ranked No. 2 at 285.
Ohio State will enter the weekend with an 11-1 mark, 5-0 in the Big Ten. The Buckeye lineup features ten ranked wrestlers. Malik Heinselman is No. 10 at 125, Jesse Mendez is No. 9 at 133, Dylan D'Emilio is No. 19 at 141, Sammy Sasso is No. 3 at 149, Paddy Gallagher is No. 25 at 157, Carson Kharchla is No. 12 at 165, Ethan Smith is No. 7 at 174, Kaleb Romero is No. 5 at 184, Gavin Hoffman is No. 17 at 197 and Tate Orndorff is No. 18 at 285.
Coming up Sunday, the Lions have another road dual meet at Indiana (7-2, 3-2 Big Ten). That one should be an easy victory.
4. Here's something to worry about for men's basketball
There is just no margin for error. The Lions are so squarely on the bubble that they simply cannot afford to lose any game that they should win from here on out.
But one big problem that we haven't accounted for much yet is the inevitable chaos that often takes place during conference championship week. When you're basically the 67th or 68th team in the field, like Penn State hopes to be, you have to do so much scoreboard watching in hopes that bids aren't stolen by upsets in smaller conferences.
It's going to happen. It always does. And even if the Lions do finish 10-10 in the Big Ten and then, say, go 1-1 in the conference tournament, they likely will still be at the mercy of potential bid stealers that could knock them out.
Of course, the way to avoid all of that is to get on a roll and win 11 games in the Big Ten. Because you'd think there's pretty much no way an 11-9 team in the league would get left out.
5. Women's basketball team having disappointing season
Penn State picked up a conference win Thursday over Northwestern, which is just 1-10 in the Big Ten.
The Lady Lions are only 4-8 in the league (13-10 overall) and have lost five of their last seven, with the two wins coming against the two worst teams (Wisconsin and Northwestern).
There's really no way around it but to point out that this is a disappointing season in year four under Carolyn Kieger. You'd think there would have been substantial progress by this point, but we just haven't seen enough of it during Kieger's tenure, and the program is essentially still irrelevant in women's college basketball.
Penn State started the season with seven consecutive wins against a relatively weak non-conference schedule, but the team has gone 6-10 since then. Yes, the team has 13 wins, but again, you have to look at the competition and who those wins were against.
Kieger is now 40-66 overall and 16-51 in the Big Ten. She inherited a very difficult job and was just 7-23 overall and 1-17 in the league during her first season. Some strides were made in years two and three, but this is looking like a 6-12 kind of season in the Big Ten.
That's nowhere near good enough for Penn State, which has a good tradition but has fallen on hard times lately.
The school probably will be patient with Kieger, but there could and should be a lot of pressure on her to turn things around next year.
