ALTOONA, Pa. -- The word ruthless is really too strong. It means "showing no pity or compassion for others," and that's not entirely accurate.
James Franklin does care about his assistant coaches -- as people. He wants them to have enriched, fulfilling lives.
But they had damn well better do their jobs at an extremely high level. Or else they're going to be gone.
We all know how things used to be at Penn State years ago. Joe Paterno would retain assistant coaches year after year, even though some of them were no longer carrying their weight on the staff.
Those days are long gone.
Franklin has proven during his tenure that he is willing to make the kind of sudden, surprising and usually necessary coaching changes for Penn State to compete at the highest level. He made another one Sunday when he fired wide receivers coach Taylor Stubblefield, coming off an 11-2 season and Rose Bowl victory.
Stubblefield was good at his job, and that's about it. He wasn't great. Wasn't setting the world on fire, either with on-field coaching and especially not in recruiting, where he languished even among Big Ten recruiters.
Penn State is competing against Ohio State, and the Buckeyes have a fantastic receivers coach in Brian Hartline, who also is one of the elite recruiters in the country. That guy crushes it with the Buckeyes, bringing in one top-flight receiver after another, and just last week Hartline was promoted to offensive coordinator.
If Penn State is going to beat Ohio State, it has to try and beat Ohio State in everything. The Nittany Lions cannot have an assistant coach who is so far beneath his counterpart with the Buckeyes that it's a glaring problem.
Franklin saw this. And decided to make a change. We'll see in the coming days who the replacement will be, but odds are it will be someone with a terrific resume.
Go back to 2015, and the entire world knew that John Donovan needed to go as offensive coordinator. The Lions' offense was pretty much terrible, Donovan did nothing to inspire any level of confidence with his vast array of jet sweeps, and Franklin made the easy decision the day after the regular season ended to fire Donovan.
Franklin then made the greatest hire of his coaching career. The hire that basically ended up saving Franklin's career at Penn State. He found Joe Moorhead at Fordham of all places, brought him on board, and Moorhead's offense helped lead Penn State to the 2016 Big Ten title.
When Moorhead left to become head coach at Mississippi State, Franklin made what I have always believed to be a big misstep. Instead of going out and getting an experienced guy for the Lions' coveted open position, Franklin promoted tight ends coach Ricky Rahne to be offensive coordinator.
Rahne was in over his head. It was obvious. He had never called plays before, there was a steep learning curve, and while he did get better over his two years, the hard truth of the matter is that he never should have gotten that job in the first place.
We don't know for sure if this is really what happened to Rahne, but the belief was that he was going to be ousted as offensive coordinator following the 2019 season and just so happened to land a head coaching job at Old Dominion. It was a tremendous turn of events for Rahne, who not only saved face from possibly getting demoted or fired, he was able to land a fantastic opportunity.
Franklin then hired Kirk Ciarrocca away from Minnesota to be offensive coordinator in 2020. The deck was heavily stacked against Ciarrocca during the COVID season, as he was never able to fully implement his offense and was saddled with severe running back limitations.
Ciarrocca deserved another season to prove what he could do.
But in a move that perhaps was pretty ruthless, Franklin fired him after one season. That news was stunning, again because Franklin wasted no time at all in making the move and cut Ciarrocca loose.
It was not fair to Ciarrocca. Period.
But, Franklin had seen enough.
Oh, and Mike Yurcich became available. Yurcich, on paper, was a significant upgrade over Ciarrocca, and Franklin decided to make the bold move and get the best possible guy he could for the job.
Yurcich had a bad 2021 season but made up for it in a big way in 2022. Now, that move by Franklin looks like a very shrewd one, especially with Ciarrocca leaving Minnesota again just last week to go to Rutgers of all places.
There also was the David Corley move. Franklin hired him to be the wide receivers coach in 2018, then fired him after just one underwhelming season.
Franklin can be an incredibly demanding head coach. Which is the way things work at this level of college football. He needs his assistants to bust their butts and put in incredible amounts of time, not only coaching but also recruiting. Again, click here and you'll see just how bad of a recruiter Stubblefield apparently was.
Now, was Stubblefield a good coach on the field with the receivers? You know, he seemed to be OK. Jahan Dotson made big strides last year and was a first-round pick, while Parker Washington and Mitchell Tinsley had solid seasons this year.
But solid isn't good enough. Solid isn't going to beat Ohio State. Solid isn't going to get to the College Football Playoff.
Franklin has talked again and again over the past couple of years about how everybody at Penn State needs to have a 365-day commitment to doing everything possible in order to help the program compete at the very highest level. Well, that means every single person in the organization needs to be held accountable to the highest degree.
If someone isn't good enough at their job, then they've gotta go.
To Franklin's credit, he has now shown on multiple occasions that he's not going to put up with mediocrity and will pull the plug in a hurry on an assistant coach if necessary.
Fair or not, that's just how things have to be in the cut-throat world of coaching these days.
