"Sixteen days ago, Penn State was the center of the college football universe. Now it's a smoldering crater whose warlords have agreed to pay what could be (but probably won't wind up being) a $50 million buyout for the coach to go away. But we must give the Nittany Lions this: They had to do it-and that's the worst indictment of the state of college football."
"It was the biggest game of the season, and 111,000 people packed into Beaver Stadium, nearly all of them in white shirts. College GameDay, the flagship ESPN show, had aired live from State College that morning. In overtime, quarterback Drew Allar threw a game-ending interception, which turned out to functionally be an era-ending interception. The next weekend, Penn State went to Pasadena, a trip the team treated as a vacation,"
"At the highest level, this has become a sport in which there is no possibility of reducing a fan revolt against a coach to "noise," as Franklin labeled it at his final press conference, right before he was fired. When everyone in a program's orbit is a piggy bank that needs to be tapped at all times for the program to remain competitive, the noise is the signal."
Penn State fell from No. 3 to a cascade of shocks in sixteen days, including an overtime interception, an unexpected loss in Pasadena and a home upset by Northwestern. The program dismissed coach James Franklin despite his prior success and a 10-year, $85 million extension that included an approximately $50 million buyout. The decision reflects a climate in which fan unrest and revenue imperatives force rapid personnel changes. Long-term contracts and massive buyouts coexist with a culture of paranoia that treats internal complaints and short-term results as decisive for a program's future.
Read at Slate Magazine
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