“… that they cared about her because she assisted them with recruiting.”

I could be wrong about this, but I’m guessing the last thing Penn State needs right now is an assertion that its head football coach had contact with an alleged victim of a rape carried out by members of his football team.

Of course, we have no idea because “Vanderbilt and Penn State did not immediately respond to requests for comment.”  But it sure don’t look good from here.

Either Penn State conducted the mother of all background checks before it hired Franklin – because the rape case was already out there in the public eye – and feels it has nothing to worry about here, or it just crossed its fingers and hired the guy.  If it’s the latter, the school had better hope it’s not jumping off the cliff with its new coach.

30 Comments

Filed under James Franklin Is Ready To Rumble

30 responses to ““… that they cared about her because she assisted them with recruiting.”

  1. Ben

    Franklin talks so much about integrity and honor, it would be fitting for him to go down like this. However, he’d just land on his feet at Auburn in a few years after getting reformed and learning from his mistakes.

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  2. Scorpio Jones, III

    UH OH….I don’t think Director of Performance Enhancement means what you think it means.

    What you do, Coach Franklin, is you report the incident to your superior.

    That’s the Penn State way.

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  3. Doggoned

    This is disgusting.

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    • uglydawg

      Very disgusting. Franklin apparently believes pretty girls go to Vandy to be recruiting bait…and his visiting the rape victim smacks of inappropriate tampering at best. It’s probably not fair to judge his intentions, but it’s at least considerable to believe he visited her to see if there was anything he could “do”.
      It looks to me like Penn State chose the latter of the two courses mentioned.. .”it just crossed it’s fingers and hired the guy.”
      Meanwhile, Frankie’s probably going through the latest PSU yearbook looking for babes to recruit to recruit.

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  4. Dog in Fla

    At least this time they got a head coach who knows how to interview a victim.

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  5. I Wanna Red Cup

    Franklin reminds me of Jim Harrick. Very swarmy. Always something about him that smells.

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  6. I hope Franklin flames out magnificently in Happy Valley. It would be even better if it happened before the season even starts. The only redeeming thing he did at Vandy was take his 48-3 whipping in Athens like a man in 2012. Remember he voted us #2 in the final polls after the game with Bama.

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  7. FCDore

    I was very glad when James Franklin was our coach. I am even more happy that he now isn’t.

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  8. FCDore

    And FWIW, I was at the Vandy – Texas A&M game in October, and far from keeping them in the shadows, the Aggies publicly showcased their hostesses at halftime.
    http://www.aggieathletics.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=27300&ATCLID=205237995

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    • AthensHomerDawg

      “If you are unfamiliar with recruiting hostesses, they were reportedly first used in the 1960s by Alabama’s Bear Bryant and spread across the country …” A coach looking for every advantage he can possibly have. Saban is a good fit an Alabama.

      Now a new book by Armen Keteyian and Jeff Benedict reveals the fire. Kiffin’s coaches paid the hostesses to entertain and “flirt with” recruits, according to the book. One hostess was known as “the Closer” for her ability to sign recruits and was paid $40 in expense money, according to the book, to “hang out with” Bryce Brown, a top running-back recruit who signed with UT. She was also given expense money to travel to a high-school game in South Carolina to recruit Corey Miller. That trip, and the Orange Pride uniform that showed up in a photograph, was enough for a national story about UT recruiting violations.

      http://www.lostlettermen.com/article/get-rid-of-cfb-recruiting-hostesses

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    • They do the same thing at Alabama. My daughter was one there. Their duties are enormous on Football Saturdays and leading up to that season opener. Beautiful intelligent girls thy are!

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      • Bulldawg165

        What exactly do those duties entail?

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        • Normaltown Mike

          They are more like a orientation leader/chaperones than anything else. I know a guy that did it at Georgia and his job was to get people where they need to be, answer questions, etc. The girls tend to be attractive but they also must have lots of personality and conversation skills.

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          • Dog in Fla

            Lots of personality and conversation skills are acts of the kind of stunning bravery and intimacy one usually only sees on the battlefield.

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        • Rest assured those duties are about making sure important guest have the very best experience attending a game.

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  9. greeneggboy

    There’s another cliff?

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  10. Daniel Simpson Day

    Methinks Grantham should have jumped on him at midfield like he did the L’ville offer when he had the chance…

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    • LorenzoDawgriquez

      Yep, two of my favorite peeps, Franklin and Grantham. A deathmatch at midfield sounds fine to me A.battle of the smarmy egos….may the worst one win.

      I do think Vandy got a major upgrade in coach character with their new guy from Stanford. I can’t believe what Franklin did to Vandy’s recruiting class. If we had a real NCAA, they would have stepped in, but we don’t.

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      • 81Dog

        I’m taking Grantham and laying the points in that matchup. Franklin may be mouthy, but Grantham is big and mouthy. He’d snap Franklin like a matchstick.

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  11. AthensHomerDawg

    Methinks the defense for the Vandy players whining about the deleted texts is wishful thinking.
    http://www.cio.com/article/749544/Think_Deleted_Text_Messages_Are_Gone_Forever_Think_Again

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  12. 69Dawg

    Hello, Georgia still has host/hostesses and has had them for years. They got reorganized and added guys when it started to look awkward. Now they are just like the group that shows visitors around campus. (I said that with a straight face).

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    • uglydawg

      Can an ugl…mmmm…homely girl be a hostess?

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    • uglydawg

      “Cupcake” usually follows “Hostess”. The “hosts” are guys who know where to hang around. I used to wonder why this kid we knew in our local high school wanted to be a cheerleader….then he got a scholly to cheer at UGA and dated most of the (female) cheerleaders before marrying the most beautiful of them. Nicely done.

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  13. D.N. Nation

    Simple litmus test, people.

    Q: Have Mark Bradley and Jeff Schultz gone out of their way to defend a controversial, kinda jerky player/coach before?
    A: Then said controversial, kinda jerky player/coach is actually really, really dirty. See: Franklin, James; Meyer, Urban; Rainey, Chris….I could go on.

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  14. Macallanlover

    Must run in the water in TN, I recall Phat Phil getting involved with a rape victim when he was at UT. Seems way out of bounds now, and even more so then because I don’t think the Knoxville situation involved a victim that was known to the UT athletic department before the incident. Sleazy on both coaches’ part, and State Penn knew there was controversy regarding Franklin before they made the decision to hire him. You would think a HC would have better sense than to get directly involved in a criminal case, but you would really wonder what State Penn was thinking given the recent past history regarding their athletic department concerning sexual assault.

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  15. cube

    Sounds like Franklin will be a perfect fit in “Happy Valley”.

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