Sports

Even Virginia Tech Football Players Can’t Believe James Franklin Is Their Head Coach

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James Franklin Virginia Tech Coach Crazy Player Reaction Kemari Copeland
Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images, Brian Bishop-Imagn Images

James Franklin is the college football coach at Virginia Tech. Even his players can’t believe it.

Rising senior Kemari Copeland called it “crazy.” He isn’t wrong.

One of the biggest names in the sport ended up at a college football program that has not won 10 games in more than a decade. Nobody saw it coming.

James Franklin fell backward into Virginia Tech.

If you had said last August that James Franklin would not make it past week six of the regular season with his job, most people would’ve laughed in your face. The Nittany Lions were ranked as high as No. 2 in the country in the preseason polls. They were coming off of a College Football Playoff appearance at 13-3. Incumbent starting quarterback Drew Allar was going to be the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft.

The season obviously did not go according to plan. Penn State lost a heartbreaker to Oregon at home in double overtime that effectively served as the first pull of the hypothetical yarn. It only unraveled from there.

UCLA ended its 16-game losing streak against top-10 opponents with a dominant first half during the massive upset victory in Week 5. A one-point loss to Northwestern sealed Franklin’s fate that next week.

Not only could he not win the “big game,” he couldn’t win the small ones. That was the end of his time in Happy Valley.

As part of Franklin’s buyout at Penn State, the 54-year-old was required to actively seek other employment opportunities. He ultimately landed at Virginia Tech, which had fired his former defensive coordinator after an 0-3 start.

The whole thing is kind of unbelievable. It happened pretty fast. Nobody saw it coming. Not even the players.

Kemari Copeland thinks it is crazy.

ACC media days are underway this week from Charlotte, North Carolina. Virginia Tech brought defensive lineman Kemari Copeland, safety Tyson Flowers and running back Marcellous Hawkins.

All three players were already in the system before James Franklin arrived. They committed to the previous regime.

Copeland has been there the longest. The former three-star recruit joined the program in 2024. He will be a senior this fall.

When asked about everything that happened over the last ~10 months, Copeland admitted that he was equally as shocked by the hire. He did not expect the Hokies to land a guy like Franklin. It is, in his words, “crazy.”

Copleland is not wrong. It is crazy that Franklin is at Virginia Tech, really.

I don’t know what the expectations look like for Year 1 in Blacksburg but there is going to be a lot of juice around the program. What would be even crazier than being there is if he can win there right away.