Penn State head coach James Franklin met with the media on Sunday afternoon after the Nittany Lions earned the No. 6 seed in the College Football Playoffs. He discusses the Nittany Lions matchup against SMU and more.

Yeah, having a home game, I think, is huge for a ton of reasons.

Obviously, hopefully a home field advantage. Also for, you know, Happy Valley, the community should be a win-win for everybody. So, we're excited about that.

And then, you know, SMU, we're just getting to know them. I literally got them on the TV right now. I'm starting to get to know them on a, obviously, much deeper level, understanding what makes them tick, how they operate, you know, what they've done this year to allow them to be successful.

You know, I have some background with Coach Lashley, followed his career, you know, from afar. SMU is interesting as a place. When I was at Vanderbilt, we went and visited them for their stadiums.

We were talking about building a new stadium, so we went and visited a number of schools, and SMU was one of them. Obviously, tremendous history and tradition at SMU. And, you know, they've done a really good job.

Obviously, you look at their roster, very different than ours. I think they have 48 players from the transfer portal. We have nine.

So, you know, just very different ways of kind of building it. And they've obviously done a really good job. So, looking forward to getting to know them a little bit better over the next couple of days.

We will not get K.J. back for this year. Like I mentioned before, long-term injury.

But the other thing is we came out of that game pretty healthy, didn't have a whole lot of issues. So, I always meet with Andy Mutton after the game in the locker room. He kind of runs down once he's gotten through it all.

And we came out of it pretty good. So, I think we're in a pretty good place. I don't really see us getting anybody back that's been out.

But in terms of who we played with this past week, we were able to come out of that game fairly healthy.

Yeah, this week will be a combination of obviously rest and recovery, getting a feel for who SMU is, a ton of study on them, and then some self-study on ourselves as well. And then we'll do some practice as well.

Some of that will be more general Penn State versus Penn State, almost like early bowl practices, almost like spring ball where we're just trying to get better at some areas that we think we have some room for improvement. And then obviously, we'll get into SMU. But this week will be most importantly about rest and recovery and getting a head start on these guys.

Well, obviously, when you're able to put up the numbers that we were able to put up on Saturday, it allows you to be explosive. It allows you to stay on schedule. It allows your play-action-pass game to really get going.

But when Kaytron rushes for 124 yards and 8.9 yards per carry and Singleton 105 yards and 10.5 yards per carry, and then Nick also another 43 yards on top of that, obviously, that's the ideal situation. But it starts up front. Our offensive line, I thought, did a really good job against a front that we had a ton of respect for on film and statistically.

But our O-line and tight ends did a really good job. And I thought Nick and Kaytron did a good job of breaking tackles and making people miss and falling forward. So, that was a real positive.

It's something, obviously, we'd like to sustain for the rest of the season. That's going to be important. But it's a challenge because everybody goes in with the mindset on defense that you're going to try to make people one-dimensional and stop the run.

Although this is a Penn State home game, it is not our game. This game is really run by the playoffs. And we don't even control the tickets.

So, we don't get recruiting tickets. We don't get anything. All the ticket revenue goes to the college football playoff.

Although it is a home game for us, we don't gain any advantages that way. If recruits want to come to the game, they're welcome to come to the game, but they're going to have to buy their own tickets and those types of things. It's not like a home game where we're able to provide tickets and things like that.

So, there's advantages, but not as much of an advantage from a recruiting perspective as people may think, other than, obviously, really good players are still able to watch us continue to play this season.

Well, we'll see. I think we're getting better, but we'll see. It's all going to be based off of how we play against SMU.

It's what you do on a consistent basis. Although we did some really good things on Saturday. We turned the ball over two times, and it's hard to win when you lose the turnover ratio.

So, we did some really good things to build off of. We've got to eliminate those bad football plays that hurt you. But overall, yeah, we're doing some good things, but that'll be decided, really, in how we play the rest of the season.

So, I'm going to hold my strong opinions until after the season.

Yeah, we're moving, and I'm pushing my staff to be very aggressive there. The challenge that I don't think a lot of people think about is typically when your season ends and you're in that time getting ready for a bowl game, you have time to sit down with all of your players and find out what's going on. Who's coming back? Who's considering going into the transfer portal? Who is going into the transfer portal? And a lot of those things impact your decision making on who you're going to try to go out and get to replace those guys with.

So, it's hard to come up with a plan. We'll do that this week, but we're probably a week behind other programs. I didn't really want to be having those conversations last week when we were getting ready for Oregon.

So, that's a little bit of a challenge. It's hard to totally know what you want to do in the portal until you know exactly what's going on with your current roster for next year. But I've asked our staff to be aggressive and move and make some decisions in positions that we think we're going to have some needs.

So, we'll have a better idea this week.

Yeah, it's very important. As you guys know, all the way back to my opening press conference, we want to do a great job recruiting the state of Pennsylvania, the region, the footprint. Those things are really important.

We're off to a really good start in this next class, and being able to keep what people like you guys have ranked as the number one player in the state of Pennsylvania home, I think is very important. We've been able to do that more times than not. So, that's something that's very important to us.

We take a lot of pride in it. I think it makes sense for both parties. It's a win-win.

So, that was a battle. Ty Howle did a phenomenal job, but he's an impressive young man. I've gotten to know him and his family very well, as you can imagine.

I also watched his tape from this year. He came to camp with us two years ago. So, we've got a pretty good idea of who he is, and he has a chance to be a weapon for us here in the near future.

Yeah, I think in the locker room, again, because the season isn't over, I think it was handled pretty well.

Obviously, there were still some hurt feelings and raw emotions, but overall, I think guys get it and understand that we've got a ton of football left in front of us as long as we handle it the right way. I think our leadership will step up big time. Today, we didn't really do anything formal.

We got here, we had a team lunch, and then after we got here and had the team lunch, we just had a team meeting and told them what the next couple of days would look like and that we would find out later this afternoon where we were playing and who we were playing against, and then that would impact our full calendar, because whether we were playing a Friday game or a Saturday game, it would impact that. We already have them all mapped out and scheduled, so the players already received it and we're ready to go, but it's not like we had a watch party or anything like that. It was a long night and a physical night, so guys, we want them to get rested and recovered.

We were pretty confident that we were going to be in the playoffs. It's just where we were going to be.

Yeah, I think he had probably five or six plays that are as good of plays that he's had in his career and probably five or six plays of better quarterback play that I've ever been around as a college player, but he probably also had four or five throws that he would like back, throws that he normally doesn't miss that he missed.

Also made some big plays with his legs, so I'm very, very pleased with his overall development, his maturity, his leadership. He made some huge plays last night to keep us in this thing and continues to do a great job of distributing the ball to our playmakers and also managing our run game. We put a lot on the quarterback at the line of scrimmage and he does a really good job of managing all those things and I think from year one to year two he's made a significant jump and I think that the scary thing and the exciting thing is I still think there's a ton left of development in him.

Yeah, I think you've heard me talk about this in the past where I think there was a period where people were complaining about staff sizes in college football and I think this week and this past week and this week coming up here are the perfect examples of how you can do it in major college football now without these staffs.

We had a signing day during a Big Ten championship week which typically takes a ton of resources and time and energy and we were able to do that without the coaches being involved at all except for myself. And then with the signing portal, same thing, getting guys set up, getting guys here on campus to visit, getting transcripts evaluated, etc. All those things I think are really important and really challenging and we got to do that while we're preparing to play the number one team in the country, Oregon, and now play SMU which is ranked 10th.

What was it? They're ranked 10th. Thank you. So, you know, obviously we got a lot of different things, a lot of moving parts going on and having those staffs are critical.

So, you know, whether it's Andy Frank or Kenny Sanders or Alan Zeanitis or whether it is Will Reimann or Ben Kerr, Kevin Threlkel, Destiny Rodriguez, all those people, you know, they do a phenomenal job and sometimes we take it for granted how we travel and how we operate. They do a phenomenal job for us.

To be honest with you, I don't know. I said it earlier in the season and that it would be cool if we get in a playoff game that it'd be a whiteout. And then about an hour ago I saw on social media that I guess the decision had been made and it's going to be.

Wasn't a whole lot of conversations besides that. I mentioned it as the possibility. Didn't have any follow-up conversations.

We were focused on finishing the season the right way and it popped up on social media that this game is a whiteout. I don't know if Mark and Cade and Chris Peterson and Pat Craft and others, Vinnie James, could answer that a little bit better than me. But I want to make sure that we're selling big enough white jackets and big enough white parkas to cover the hunting gear that everybody's got the best chance to follow the whiteout dress code.

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