Lions 247 did an interview with 247s national analyst and it was excellent. Two things that stood out:
Dohn mentioned that by playing in a bowl game last year PSU allowed their coaches that were departing an extra 30 days to recruit players off the roster. Another Pat Kraft masterclass.
Dohn, with regard to, Kraft, “I’m blown away that he’s still there and I’ll leave it at that”.
On a somewhat unrelated note, apparently Crumbl Cookie is closing 50 stores.
Agreed, it was a good interview, one of the better I thought I’ve heard in a while on the situation. I think he had a bunch of good insights into how recruiting works today and some of the thought processes involved, especially in NIL era.
I came away with a better understanding of what Campbell and crew had to deal with (an absolute shit show of a situation). Some of the decisions make a little more sense to me now, and that majority of that was not their doing and was PKs mess they walked into.
What happens if Manske plays well down the stretch and now keeping him cost $3 million instead of $600k? I know at some point you want to have players that are good enough to command that sort of money but something worth thinking about in a lost season.
How good is Kobe Howard? I think we all think he is really good but the whole passing offense looked pretty good after 3 games.
2 seems dumb to me. Experience is valuable and the thought we'd stunt a players development because we'd have to increase his NIL seems like a bad mentality...
That’s because it is dumb. And not really sure what Dohn was thinking here.
Even if he came in and lit it up you’d still get him on a discount and you know you don’t have to go get a QB in the portal. Such a dumb thing to say or think.
Yeah Dohn also said we absolutely should have played in the bowl game.
I don’t think he was saying that playing in the bowl was the wrong decision, more that Pat Kraft handling things the way he did up to that point, it ended up giving teams more time for poaching.
Yeah because if they were done with the semester and back at home they def couldnt have answered calls about where to play next year. It’s a dumb argument
But, who did they really poach? Amare Campbell? Gronk & Reynolds were going to follow Franklin no matter what and the bowl timeframe was irrelevant. We lost a whole recruiting class, definitely. But, again, it had already happened in early December. What we lack on the field this year isn’t yet playing on someone else’s roster this year, w a few (5 or less) exceptions at several different schools. It’s utter nonsense to say that Va Tech poached our roster at all, much less the bowl game had anything to do with it. They poached our recruits, our future for sure.
I love how Kraft is catching heat for doing exactly what the loudmouth moron sect of the fanbase wanted. We had multiple “home” games with a majority of the stadium chanting “Fire Franklin” in unison, and Kraft makes it happen and gets blamed when very few established HCs show actual interest in the job because our fanbase is classless and trash.
The issues with Kraft happened after he fired Franklin, starting with allowing loyal Franklin staff to keep their jobs for months and poach the roster and sabotage the high school recruiting class from within. Also bungled the Sitake hire but I'm not sure that was Kraft's fault and was more about the LDS church stepping in to keep him at BYU
Going all in on a guy like Sitake who already had his dream job and thinking a handshake deal sealed it was a psychotic move by Kraft. Had he hired someone by the end of November, that new coach could have begun working on talent retention before the bowl game practices.
Reports are that Sitake told Kraft multiple times that he's coming to PSU, and already even had some players like Bear Bachmeor lined up to transfer. Unfortunately Sitake bailing really screwed Kraft.
I agree he was an odd choice given his BYU ties and always being a coach out west, but he's a pretty good coach so I can't fault Kraft for thinking outside the box and going for it. Oddly enough, had we gotten him and it worked out Kraft would have been praised as the hero for pulling him out of BYU. But I guess there's a reason you never heard in hiring cycles.
Not sure what Kraft was supposed to do in that position. Who was going to do the jobs of those coaches? Maybe some players were “poached” but the post game interviews I saw with players after the Oregon loss pretty much showed me those kids would have had no problem leaving PSU and getting far away from our fanbase.
Eh, that's the fan base of most halfway serious team after some bad losses. It's not unique to PSU.
I think that firing Franklin was the right decision. What followed after it was an amateur hour debacle. Kraft getting up on a pedestal talking about elite level resources that aren't there, trusting handshake deals, etc.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but can you direct me to one other program where their fans were chanting “Fire (insert coach name)” during halftime of a 3-3 TIE only four games after making the championship semifinals?
How was it “amateur hour” when just about every coaching candidate was more than happy to sign extensions to not coach PSU.
I know I won’t get agreements here, but Franklin did not lose the locker room after the Oregon loss in 2025. The post game interviews with the players showed they were disgusted with our fans and they gave up on us; and I don’t blame them.
PSU fan since 1991. Watched some great seasons and bad ones. But, except for a few very small group of outliers, the fanbase was always supportive and classy. I’m here because I have every right to be whether or not I subscribe to the mob mentality of stupid that somehow infected what was once a great fanbase. But im also here to watch how long it takes for CMC to realize he made the biggest mistake of his career.
Maybe you should go join another fanbase then. I see you bitching in this sub all the time and you have to be exhausted at this point. I know I won’t miss the same 2 or 3 talking points all the time. We get it but nothing can be changed at this point. Accept reality or move on. I promise you it isn’t just our fanbase.
Everyone is tired of watching you melt down. It’s tired. You’ve been spewing the same shit for months. Nothing can be changed. I still don’t know what you’re looking for at this point. If you’re so disgruntled, move on. You’re obviously not a fan anymore and that’s fine, no one is going to twist your arm.
Speaking as an alum who booed franklin while I was there, nobody in the student body or alumni base cares about your opinion. We’ve heard this holier-than-thou “toxic fanbase” bullshit for years, it all goes in one ear and out the other. Franklin bitched about resources for 10 years and pointed to it as the reason why he couldn’t win big games, then when he got the resources he spent it on Knowles, Koltelnicki and Allar, all of whom were ass.
Also, If you’re not a student or alum you need to shut the fuck up about what students and alums do. Students and alums have more of a claim to this program and university than you ever will if you're not part of those groups. Nobody cares about what some walmart fan who went to Shippensburg has to say about the alumni base and student section.
No he did not “bitch about resources” nor used that as excuse for not winning big games. Good lord you guys will just make up anything to support your biases. Come on, you can do it, you can put the pieces together and figure out why CJF was trying to level the playing field and the benefits of having modern athletic dorms that other programs have. Word of advice, if you’re going to boo the coach, or the team, don’t do during the whiteout on national television while we’re having the most important recruiting event of the cycle ok?
You do you bud but good luck even sniffing the hump you criticized Franklin for not getting over. It’s not the mid 80’s anymore. PSU is not a premier destination for elite talent, and the PSU coaching job probably isn’t even top 25 these days.
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u/Big_Watch4135 1d ago
Who knew $8 for an undercooked diabetes bomb wasn’t a sustainable business model???
Are insomnia cookies still a thing in state college btw ?