Editor’s note: This column has been updated with new information
One day after he fired James Franklin as Penn State football coach in October, director of athletics Pat Kraft stood behind a pulpit that was brought into the Beaver Stadium interview room specially for him.
“I’m not shy to admit that I’m here to win national championships,” Kraft said. “We’ll find a coach who can achieve excellence at the highest level.”
Fifty-one days later, he’s still looking.
Penn State was the second school to fire its coach during the regular season and is the last one to replace him.
Fifty-one days.
Michigan State fired Jonathan Smith on Sunday and hired Pat Fitzgerald within hours. Kentucky did the same on Monday, dismissing Mark Stoops and quickly replacing him with Will Stein.
Fifty-one days.
Kraft made BYU coach Kalani Sitake the latest target in his prolonged search, but Sitake decided Tuesday to stay as the Cougars head coach.
While Sitake may have been one of Kraft’s leading candidates, the BYU community, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and Jason McGowan, the co-founder and CEO of Crumbl Cookie, probably had something to say about it. Only in college football.
They pulled out all the stops to keep Sitake, who’s clearly beloved in Utah.
A native of Tonga, Sitake seems like a fine coach who has an 83-44 record with the Cougars, including 22-3 the last two seasons. But he has no ties to Penn State or the Big Ten.
He’s never coached east of Utah and has just one player on the current BYU roster who grew up east of Texas. He would have needed a GPS to find Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
It didn’t make sense and it would not have been a good fit. He was a secondary option after Kraft swung and missed at guys like Mike Elko of Texas A&M, Kalen DeBoer of Alabama and Marcus Freeman of Notre Dame.
Another setback for Kraft in his bungled coaching search.
Fifty-one days.
Penn State fans are wondering what Kraft’s plan was when he fired Franklin, who led the Nittany Lions to a school-record 34 wins the last three years and the College Football Playoff semifinals last season.
Did Kraft want to replace Franklin with Nebraska coach Matt Rhule, a former Penn State player and his buddy from their time together at Temple? Lions fans quickly expressed their dismay at that possibility and then watched Minnesota dominate the Cornhuskers five days after Franklin’s firing.
Less than two weeks later, Rhule signed a contract extension to stay at Nebraska.
Kraft pursued Elko, DeBoer and Freeman with no luck and apparently no backup plan.
Names like Eli Drinkwitz of Missouri, Brent Key of Georgia Tech, Jeff Brohm of Louisville, Matt Campbell of Iowa State and Bob Chesney of James Madison were floated throughout November.
Then last week and over the weekend, rumors surfaced that USC’s Lincoln Riley would be the next Penn State coach or perhaps Tennessee’s Josh Heupel.
Is it possible that prospective coaches were scared off by Penn State firing a guy who had won 70% of his games and who was coming off an appearance in the national semifinals?
“I have no doubt that LaVell (late BYU coach LaVell Edwards) would be advising him (Sitake) to be careful,” said former BYU quarterback Ty Detmer, who won the 1991 Heisman Trophy. “If you don’t beat a couple top 10 teams, you are going to be the next guy out in two or three years.”
Fifty-one days.
Monday morning, injured Penn State linebacker Tony Rojas posted on X: “so when we gonna know our coach??”
Penn State players, coaches and fans are asking the same question.
Sitake’s name surfaced over the weekend. On Monday footballscoop.com reported that talks between him and Penn State were heating up. He acknowledged the reports Monday during a press conference advancing the Big 12 title game against Texas Tech on Saturday.
Since then, the BYU community strongly responded with successful pleas to keep the 50-year-old Sitake in Provo.
Wednesday is National Signing Day. Penn State had five high school seniors left in its class as of Tuesday afternoon, and it wasn’t clear how many of them would actually sign letters of intent.
Franklin has flipped several Penn State commits since he was hired at Virginia Tech last month.
The Lions need a coach who can wage recruiting battles with Franklin in Virginia, Maryland and, yes, Pennsylvania.
Chesney, a Pennsylvania native from Kulpmont, reportedly is headed to UCLA. If he hasn’t signed a contract, Kraft should get him. Chesney, who’s at James Madison, has won at every level in college football. He knows the landscape.
No matter who winds up as Penn State’s next coach, Kraft’s search has been, to put it politely, clumsy. He either overplayed his hand or he wasn’t fully prepared to make the most important hire in his career.
Fifty-one days and Nittany Nation is still waiting.
