FAR FROM SCANDAL, JAMES FRANKLIN HAS TAKEN PENN STATE TO THE FINAL FOUR

Finally, fans can praise a coach who lost too many big games but also removed the horror of Jerry Sandusky, appreciating a program that quieted Ashton Jeanty and might return to championship glory

In a deeper sphere coated with real lessons, James Franklin yanked Penn State from the outrage of scandal. Do we even look at the football program anymore and think of Jerry Sandusky and Joe Paterno? He has won in the mightiest of ways, and as a biracial coach, he “sees the world through eyes” that left horrors in the past and should make a valley much happier between East Coast megacities.

Yet folks have not viewed Franklin as a winner until now. Finally, he has taken his team to national prominence, to the semifinals of the College Football Playoff, meaning he’s one victory over Notre Dame or Georgia from a championship setting. Every time has has lost to another team ranked in the top five, such as Ohio State or Michigan, he must remind irrational fans of the truth.

“Nobody is looking in the mirror harder than I am, but 99 percent of the programs would die to do what we’ve been able to do in our time here,” Franklin said. “We are one of the few programs (where) you can win 10 or 11 games and people are unhappy,”

He has won 101 games in 11 years and advanced to two Big Ten title games. Will this be the one postseason when 107,000 people are known for more than their White Out clothing garb? The Nittany Lions spent New Year’s Eve quieting Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty, who thought he “should have walked away” with the Heisman Trophy until he fumbled twice and was swallowed by a rush defense. They used three touchdown passes from Drew Allar in a 31-14 victory. They can beat Kirby Smart with a reserve quarterback or Marcus Freeman with his own 36-season doom in South Bend.

“We’ve got a ton to be proud of and we focus on that,” Franklin said. “We value winning, and if you watch college football all over the country, it’s hard to win on a consistent basis. You see it every single week, upsets and things like that. We value winning. We respect winning and what it takes.”

He also spent recent days pondering his sport’s future and nominating Nick Saban for a role he deserves: CFP commissioner. Though Franklin benefited from Boise State slipping though in a smaller Group of 5, he was taking a more educated look at a flawed system. Why is Oregon playing Ohio State in a quarterfinal when they might be the top two teams? Why do we cheapen action by giving too much credence to conference championships? Gee, shouldn’t Franklin be cheerful these days? The man always seems to want change that does make sense.

“When you have a committee sitting in a room trying to compare apples to apples, or oranges to oranges, it's hard to do that when not everybody's playing under the same model. Get rid of the conference championship game,” he said. “That will shorten the season and help with the window a little bit. Let’s take some stress off the academic calendar. God forbid we talk about academics, right? That used to be every conversation started with academics, and that's becoming less and less. Maybe I'm old school and a traditionalist, but I still believe in the model. Rather than say this is a problem, I think one of the most important things we can do is get a commissioner.”

So? “He wakes up every single morning and goes to bed every single night making decisions that's in the best interest of college football,” Franklin said. "I think Nick Saban would be the obvious choice if we made that decision. Now, Nick will probably call me tonight and say, ‘Don't do this,’ but I think he's the choice, right? Whenever you have people making decisions and running college football, they're going to be biased towards what's best to their conference, and that's not in the best interest of college football and the student athletes. If every decision we make is based on money, then we're heading in the wrong direction.”

Of course, he is a proficient coach in a conference that wants the most for its prime members. Imagine Penn State and Ohio State in a final four that might not include SEC teams, if Georgia and Texas lose. He arrived from Vanderbilt as a “Pennsylvania boy with a Penn State heart” and has run a solid program. This season, Franklin had to apologize for refusing to discuss two former players who face rape charges. There isn’t a coach in college sports who always must be right after the ills of Sandusky, the convicted serial child molester who worked for Paterno.

“I didn't do a great job of handling it,” Franklin said. "Difficult, difficult situation and I’ve got to own that I did not do a good job of that. You guys have got a job to do and you’ve got to ask those questions. The university had put out a statement, and the reality is there's not a whole lot more I can say other than that statement. It's an ongoing legal situation and it's challenging on everybody.”

At the moment, he is preparing for the program’s biggest moment in eons. Allar has the game’s next great tight end, Tyler Warren, but Penn State likes to run the ball with Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen. “I get it — we have a really passionate fan base and they’re a huge part of our success,” Allar said. “We always want to go out there every drive and end with a touchdown, so when we don’t do that, there’s nobody more frustrated than us.”

Said offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, a rising star: “If we had a nickel for every time there was a Monday morning quarterback saying some BS stuff, we’d all be pretty rich. I think part of being a quarterback, especially at Penn State but really anywhere, is how you respond to and manage criticism.”

When Franklin studied the results and noticed his defense shutting down Jeanty, who ran for a season-low 104 yards on 30 carries, he did seem excited. “We played a complete game,” he said. “Our offense, defense and special teams — we played complementary football, did some special things.” The Orange Bowl is next on Jan. 9.

Until then, Franklin will have more subjects for Saban. The transfer portal is tossing more dirt during the playoff. Last week, backup quarterback Beau Pribula was forced to leave for Missouri, where he can start next season.

“We’ve got problems in college football,” the coach said.

Right now, one of them is not Penn State failing.

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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.