“Obviously, for me, I want to make sure that the fans know how much we appreciate them,” Franklin said. “I know next week, there will be 112,000 in the stadium. I don’t know if that’s possible. But I also appreciate the fans that travel with us on the road because it helps.”

Appreciation for the coaches and players who battled through a challenging environment and circumstances to emerge with a win. Appreciation for the media members who traveled four states over to provide coverage of his football program. And maybe most of all, an appreciation for the fans that traveled to hostile territory, then received the reward of a win and postgame celebration in Iowa’s building.

The Nittany Lions’ head coach, contemplative following a 17-12 win against the Hawkeyes to mark a 6-0 start to the 2019 season, ran through the positives and negatives from the game.

The transition set up his next point, one accentuated by the reality of the No. 7 Nittany Lions’ White Out game against No. 16 Michigan set for national television Saturday night.



Whether it’s fully grasped or not, Penn State is having a moment and Franklin is determined to capitalize on it from beyond the immediacy of the opportunity to remain unbeaten for at least another week.

“To me, that’s probably the next step for us is when we can really, really travel and take over other people’s stadiums,” Franklin said, encouraging a buy-in beyond that of consistently selling out the nation’s second-largest stadium and third-largest in the world. “As you guys know, I study a lot of things that are going on all around the country in our profession, in our business, and our game, and I see that. I was on the other end of that in the past as well. So the fans that we get that travel with us are phenomenal, but we want that to grow.

“I want Penn State to have an unbelievable national reputation for how we travel, all over the country, wherever we play, and not just the bowl game; regular, in-season games.”

Certainly, Franklin and the Nittany Lions will work all week to improve on their bowl-guaranteed season with another favorable outcome against the Wolverines.

But that outcome is also, to a certain extent, beside the larger point to be made about the Penn State football program.

This weekend, ESPN’s College GameDay program will make its home in Happy Valley for the third consecutive year for a game with the most national significance on the Week Seven slate. This comes in the midst of a run for the Nittany Lions that has now reached a mark of 37-9 since the start of the 2016 season, with a win total that trails only Clemson (47-3), Alabama (47-3), Ohio State (42-5), Oklahoma (41-6), and Wisconsin (38-9) in the same span.

Last week, HBO broadcast an hour-long 24/7 documentary, acting as a gift-wrapped infomercial highlighting Franklin, his assistant coaches, and the players that make up the program. At the next level, the fruits of those successes are taking shape as former Nittany Lion Saquon Barkley is the reigning NFL Rookie of the Year, while Chris Godwin, Miles Sanders, Carl Nassib, Mike Gesicki, DaeSean Hamilton and a host of other recent Penn State products make their marks.

Meanwhile, in the immediacy of this moment, the Nittany Lions are bowl eligible yet again, off to an unbeaten start with a group that for all practical purposes is proving itself to be a year ahead of schedule. A team overwhelmingly composed of contributors still in the early stages of their Penn State careers, that the Nittany Lions have passed every test to this point on the schedule while maintaining a grounded mindset bodes well not only for the remainder of the 2019 season but also into the future as well.

“Although we’ve got a young team, one of the younger teams in college football, we have a very mature approach. They’ve been great,” Franklin said Saturday night. “How we practice, how we meet, how they interact with the coaches, our coaches interact with them. It’s really good. It really is. I’ve been doing this for 24 years; it’s pretty good.”

That hasn’t prevented Franklin from using the season’s early successes as a motivating tool to dream bigger, though.

Urging the team to search for ways to improve, even by finding minor tweaks that, when compounded, can lead to real, appreciable dividends, a greater purpose is at work.

It’s program-building, and Franklin envisions much more than what’s currently taking place with the program under his watch.

“We just got to keep refining this thing and we can't be satisfied, we can't become complacent, which I don't think we will,” Franklin said, launching into a plea for outside assistance to their goals. “Next week, we need that stadium and that town rocking like it's never rocked before. I'm talking about vibrating. I'm talking about it being a seismic event for the entire weekend. I'm talking about the restaurants, the bars, the hotels, everything. The place needs to be rocking like it's never rocked before. And we need to keep that going.”

Intensely focused on a developmental approach that includes all facets of Penn State football and the community that surrounds it, Franklin and the Nittany Lions put in the work to create the all-in moment that the upcoming weekend represents.

Already pleased by the progress of the pieces he can most directly control, it’s a trajectory Franklin hopes will soon enrapture the totality of the elements which he cannot.

“I’ve been around some good teams, I’ve been around some good programs, I’ve had some pretty good years,” Franklin said. “The locker room is good. They’re so supportive of one another. They care so much about each other. It’s good.

“We gotta keep it going. We gotta keep building.”

Saturday night, Penn State will get another opportunity to do so. Judging by the many indicators of the program’s overall health, it won’t be the last.