James Franklin: Micah Parsons will not return for 2020 season

Micah Parsons' Penn State career is over, James Franklin has confirmed.

The Penn State head coach said on Wednesday that, although there were conversations after the Big Ten's football season was revived, Parsons will not be opting back in for the 2020 season.

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"We had a really great conversation with Micah and both his mom and his dad," Franklin said. "I think there was a legitimate possibility for that happening, but as we continued to talk and continued to work with it, the timing of it made it challenging. He had been gone for so long and had been in California training that that made it a little bit more complicated than we were able to work through so that won't be happening."

Parsons announced his decision to opt out of any potential college football season in early August, and Franklin reiterated again on Wednesday that he was supportive of that decision from the start.

As for the outlook of the rest of the linebackers, Franklin is optimistic.

"In a lot of ways the time has allowed us to really work through some of that, obviously there's a lot of excitement about...Ellis Brooks and Brandon Smith and Charlie Katshir, and then obviously the new guys as well as Curtis Jacobs and Zuriah Fisher and Tyler Elsdon, so we feel like we've got a really good group there," Franklin said.

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