The problems presented by the shutdown of the football program at Penn State stretch all the way from James Franklin’s condo, back to campus and onto the front lawns of every player who is home at a time when he expected to be at practice.
Still, they pale in comparison to the deadly coast-to-coast reach of the coronavirus, and no one knows that any better than Franklin — on a deeply personal level.
“My youngest daughter (Addison) has sickle cell,” Franklin said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters. (It’s an unfortunate reality he first revealed nearly six years ago when he was hired.)
“It hits home for us, as I know it does for a lot of families. We’ve been on lockdown from the beginning. It’s not something we messed around with at all. It’s a scary time for all of us.”
At the outset, Franklin said, “My wife and kids were so happy to see me, and about now they’re ready for me to go back to work.”
Yet, there is work to be done.
• Franklin does regular conference calls from home with athletic director Sandy Barbour and other university officials.
• There were 157 people at a recent team meeting, thanks to Zoom. Franklin likes to hold those meetings at least once a week.
• When he is sitting down to breakfast with his wife and two daughters, a recruit might call on Facetime.
“I feel like I’m pulled in different directions,” he said. “Yeah, I’m home, but I still have to put in a certain number of hours.”
He also said there is a chance his and his staff’s regular summer vacations might be canceled “because everything will be bumped back.”
“We have to come out of this and be able to hit the ground running.”
When the shutdown occurred, Franklin had not been with his team on the field because spring practice wasn’t scheduled to start until March 18. Players have been given workout regimens to take home, and Franklin said he has seen video of offensive linemen practicing pass blocking sets on their front lawns.
“Some schools have gotten done with spring ball. Our players were home on spring break when this hit,” he said.
The other problem: “We weren’t able to get recruits on campus.”
Franklin said he is reluctant to do virtual tours with recruits, but he might be forced into it.
“To be honest with you, I think we have a great building, and I don’t necessarily want (rivals) to know what we have in our buildings,” he said. “l know that’s what we do. We steal ideas from other people.
“It’s one thing to call a player. It’s another thing to be able to get on Facetime and be able to interact and smile and see each other.
“There’s value in all these things, and we’re trying to embrace it as much as we possibly can to close ground on some of the schools that got further into spring ball and further into junior days.”
There was much to do this spring, anyway, with four new coaches on staff, including offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca.
“We’ve done a lot of these things remotely,” Franklin said, “but face-to-face (practice) time is important. You learn so much by going against your defense every day.”
Franlin said he would like to see the U.S. step up its isolation efforts.
“Early on, a lot of people weren’t taking this seriously enough,” he said. “I’m not a politician, but there’s part of me that would just love to lock the whole country down, all of it.
“The sooner we do that, the sooner we can come out of this thing.”
He declined to answer when asked if anyone in his program has tested positive for covid-19: “I don’t even know if that’s legal to do that,” he said.
He also implored the NFL to push back the draft from its April 23-25 dates “to take pressure off all these players so they still have the best chance to be evaluated.”
“This has been a wakeup call for us, how fragile it all is, how careful we have to be.”
Back home with the family, he couldn’t even get in a good workout.
“We’re in a condo, and there’s a weight room my wife and I have tried to go down and use,” he said, noting he practices social distancing and won’t use it if others are there. “I took the 25-pound weights and brought them up to our apartment because we couldn’t get there.
“A guy was dominating the weight room for two hours a day. Then, he left a nasty a note, ‘Whoever stole the 25-pound weights, could you bring them back?’
“Then, I wrote a little note and said ‘Could you stop dominating the weight room for three hours a day?’
“It’s been different for all us, no doubt about it.”
