As an exhausting year winds to a close, James Franklin had to take a moment or two to consider a question he was asked Tuesday.
Have all the sacrifices made by players, coaches and staff been worth it to play the 2020 season?
“I guess, right now, in the heat of it all, it’s hard to answer that,” the Penn State coach said during his weekly video news conference. “I’m not just looking at it from football, (I’m) looking at the whole picture. Obviously, when all these decisions were made, it was hard to predict how this was going to play out.
“I mean, you look at the Big Ten in general, you look at the records in the Big Ten, there’s been a few programs that have been able to do it. But I don’t know if there’s every been a year in the Big Ten like this, from a competitive standpoint, you know, pretty much across the board.”
Penn State is just one of four teams out of 14 in the Big Ten to play all seven scheduled games so far along with Indiana, Rutgers and Iowa. The Nittany Lions are set to play their final game at Beaver Stadium when they host Michigan State on Saturday.
Franklin praised director of athletic medicine Wayne Sebastianelli, team doctor Greg Billy, head athletic trainer Andy Mutnan and his staff for “the burden they have felt” in helping keep the Lions free of any major COVID-19 outbreaks this season.
But while the team has managed to stay relatively healthy, the effort involved in that has taken its strain mentally. That’s especially true for Franklin, who has been living apart from his wife and two daughters to protect his youngest, Addison, who has sickle cell disease and would be more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
“It’s been tough,” Franklin said. “I will tell you this, I can’t tell you what I would do for a hug from my wife and daughters. I can’t express to you. I want us to practice well today and play well on Saturday, but there’s also going to be a point where, when we get to the end of the season — for me and our players and our staff, everybody — I’m very sensitive to it. How can we get everybody to their families in a safe way and let them get some time before we come back to school and get back going on our offseason and trying to get back to some normalcy.
“I think one of the big things for me is, not only getting down to see my family, but how can I get my family back here at some point? How could they come back and do that and keep my daughter safe without really having anywhere near here that can handle sickle cell?”
Senior captain Shaka Toney credited team-wide discipline for keeping the roster healthy, something that did not falter even after a miserable 0-5 start.
Penn State avoided some of the pitfalls that have forced other teams to cancel games, including not attending parties at Halloween and family gatherings at Thanksgiving.
“Our team hasn’t had COVID cases because of the sacrifices that we made as a team,” Toney said. “We’re not seeing our families. We’re not seeing students. We’re not seeing friends. We’re literally only seeing people in the (team) building and on the team.”
Franklin said during the summer he fought to play the 2020 season in part because of his seniors who were especially anxious to play.
Those veterans have appreciated the opportunity, despite everything.
“Not seeing family, that’s been the toughest thing,” said Will Fries, another fifth-year senior. “A lot of people don’t realize you can’t enjoy a normal life. It makes it tough being away from your family, knowing they’re at the games and you can’t see them.
“(But) to have a season and to be able to play with these guys for another year, it was definitely worth it.”
Lions to honor 12
As for those seniors, Penn State has announced that 12 will be honored before Saturday’s game — Fries, Toney, TE Trevor Baker, S Jaquan Brisker, CB Tariq Castro-Fields, K Carson Landis, WR Isaac Lutz, C Michal Menet, DT Antonio Shelton, DE Shane Simmons, S Lamont Wade and WR Benjamin Wilson.
The unique wrinkle of this season, however, is that none of those seniors will actually be out of eligibility to return in 2021.
Earlier in the year, the NCAA ruled that no fall sports athletes would lose a year of eligibility because of the myriad issues caused by the pandemic. So any senior could opt to return for next season and would not count against the 85-scholarship limit.
“There’s some conversations that we are going to need to have,” Franklin said. “I’ve also encouraged our assistants to start having these conversations on Thursday and Friday — not just about their futures, but just in general — making sure that we’re talking to our guys enough, during a time where these conversations are probably more valuable than ever. They’re always important, but right now, more than ever.”