Those James Franklin years looks like the Bear & Saban era @ Bama by comparison. This is just embarrassing, of course they weren’t gonna win but jeez.
And I reiterate that folks can accuse me of whatever the want, but the James Franklin era was a cycle of illusion that occurred only because of turmoil in other programs that gave him cheap wins.
Jackie Sherrill was a good coach, okay? Go look at his record at Miss State, a perennial also-ran. He had two seven-win seasons with Felker's recruits and then had three losing seasons in four years. Then he had four years as an SEC Western Division contender in 1997-2000.
Why? I can't imagine except I can:
1) Alabama crippled by probation in both 1995 and 1998.
2) Ole Miss crippled by probation in 1995.
3) Auburn socked with probation in 1993 and then a ton of Lowder/Bowden/Tubs turmoil 1997-99
4) added a win by replacing Florida (0-1) with Vandy (2-0), who wasn't on the 93-96 schedules at all
MSU record vs those three teams
1993-1996 - 4-8
1997-2000 - 9-3
Net gain of 5 wins
MSU overall record
93-96 - 20-23-2
97-00 - 33-15
They were 8 games better in the loss column in those four years. Five of those were problems at Alabama and Ole Miss (which also made getting recruits from those schools easier) and Auburn and another 1 1/2 due to replacing Florida with Vandy.
Yes, James Franklin deserves credit for winning. But he was also aided in that endeavor by circumstances that if not prevalent at that time would never have made him the Penn State coach, too.
Remember when Gerry DiNardo was supposed to be a big deal at Vandy? His record was an illusion, too. Take away the fact four of his 19 wins were against Kentucky thanks to having a moron as their own head coach (Bill Curry), and you understand why this wasn't a big deal. Kentucky went 7-1 around DiNardo's time and 0-4 against him was the difference.
and now back to football.