Who Will Replace James Franklin?
The Audible with Stew, Bruce & Ralph: A show about college football
The Athletic
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Penn State has fired James Franklin after a shocking loss to Northwestern at home, ending his tenure after years of struggling to win big games. Despite the fractures beneath the surface that led to this moment, does it make sense to fire a coach who consistently wins 10 games?
The crew breaks down the two frontrunners to replace Franklin: Curt Cignetti, who just pulled off the biggest win of the year by beating Oregon at home, and Matt Rhule, who has a close relationship with AD Pat Kraft but has his own problems against strong opponents. They debate whether Penn State should swing for the home run hire or play it safe, and which other candidates like Matt Campbell and John Sumrall could be in play.
Ralph defends his controversial AP ballot that has Indiana at #5 despite their road win over Oregon, sparking a heated debate about resume versus the eye test. Plus, the guys make their picks for USC at Notre Dame, Georgia vs. Ole Miss, Alabama vs. Tennessee, and LSU at Vanderbilt, and give their upset specials for the week.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The volume of booing in that stadium at that point. |
| 0:03.1 | It's weird to say, right? |
| 0:04.0 | It wasn't like a, oh, ref, you suck kind of booing. |
| 0:07.0 | It was, we are totally disgusted and done with you kind of booing. |
| 0:16.8 | Welcome back to the latest edition of the Audible, presented by Trader Joe. |
| 0:21.8 | I am Bruce Feldman, joined as always by my colleagues from the Athletics, Stuart Mandel, |
| 0:26.3 | and Ralph Russo. We didn't see Ralph the other day, so I shouldn't say, as always, he was coming |
| 0:31.3 | back from the Oregon-Indiana game. So he was traveling, but we got a lot to pick his brain |
| 0:37.3 | about. We are going to get |
| 0:38.5 | into Penn State firing James Franklin. And now where does Penn State go from here? We're going to |
| 0:44.6 | talk about the absolutely insane money of coaching buyouts and how that seems to be working. And a lot |
| 0:52.0 | more to dig into Ralph. |
| 0:54.8 | Where do you want to start? |
| 0:57.0 | Well, maybe we should start with James Franklin. |
| 1:00.3 | Start at the end. |
| 1:01.0 | Ralph, can you start with, speaking of James Franklin, |
| 1:03.3 | where in your route were you between Oregon and New York when you got either the DM |
| 1:08.1 | or whatever that he was out? |
| 1:10.7 | Yeah, so, yeah, right, cross-country trip. |
| 1:13.3 | I had finally fallen asleep a little bit. |
| 1:17.0 | I don't sleep very well on planes, even on a cross-country trip. |
| 1:20.9 | So when I flipped open my phone, I was getting Wi-Fi on the plane, and I saw the activity in Slack. |
... |
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