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Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft is under fire after audio of him addressing several football players amid a tumultuous coaching search leaked.
Kraft already faced backlash earlier in the week after failing to secure his reported top target: BYU head coach Kalani Sitake.
Notably, the leaked audio does not present the entire meeting between Kraft and the team, but rather individual edited pieces. Whoever recorded and then leaked the audio also likely committed a felony under Pennsylvania’s wiretap laws.
Penn State AD Pat Kraft Puts It All Out There In Leaked Audio Of Team Meeting
The audio begins with Kraft expressing the importance of making the right hire to the team. He says that while players will graduate and move on, Kraft will be fired if he messes up the hire and he will likely not receive another athletic director job.
“How could you f— up Penn State?” he asked rhetorically.
Kraft went on to explain that he fired James Franklin so as not to “settle for second best.” He also used that point to explain why interim head coach Terry Smith would likely not be named the full-time head coach despite playing a close game against No. 2 Indiana.
The audio is reportedly from a meeting held prior to Penn State’s victory over Rutgers to end the season. Smith finished the season on a three-game winning streak (albeit against Michigan State, Nebraska and Rutgers).
Kraft then talked about how many of the recruits who followed Franklin to Virginia Tech were not highly rated and how they would not have helped Penn State win at the level he believes the school should be winning.
He also then stops to call Oregon fraudulent, which is hilarious.
An unnamed player then speaks up about the difficulty of recruiting to State College, Pennsylvania, which is largely surrounded by farmland. Kraft agreed with the player and stated that the university needs to change its approach to recruiting and be more aggressive with its use of NIL funds, again taking a shot at Oregon in the process.
Pat Kraft Critcizes James Franklin’s Decision Making
Kraft then addresses “Tony,” who is almost certainly Penn State linebacker Tony Rojas, who has been active in advocating for Terry Smith on Twitter. Rojas says that part of the reason Penn State struggles to recruit at wide receiver is due to the lack of an elite wide receiver coach.
A number of Penn State fans called for current WR coach Marques Hagans to be fired following the 2024 season. However, Franklin retained Hagans for an additional season.
Rojas and another player then ask Kraft how he can lure top talent to State College. They suggest using NIL, to which Kraft replies that the current Penn State roster is probably among the “top four” highest-paid in the country.
However, he throws in the caveat that he doesn’t necessarily agree with how the money was spent by James Franklin. Kraft and the players also complained about how Franklin refused to play younger, more talented players over more experienced players.
One of the players then states how Franklin used NIL to pay everyone, whereas Smith and others believe that the best players should be the highest paid. An unidentified voice notes that 103 players received NIL payments at Penn State, while a number of top schools pay just 60-65 players.
Kraft then states that Franklin’s recent recruiting classes have fallen down the rankings and that the development of players had seemingly plateaued.
Ultimately, the audio itself was not that glaring for Kraft. But the fact that it leaked puts him and the Penn State athletic department in a worse spot than they already were. And now they need to find a new coach willing to walk into that environment.