Lane Kiffin: James Franklin is the “model” of roster of management in transfer portal era

It’s game day! For the final time during the 2023 season, the Penn State football team will take the field in the Peach Bowl. The Nittany Lions have the opportunity to secure a victory in every New Year’s Six Bowl game if they beat Ole Miss today. This week has been full of press conferences and media availability for both teams. But Friday’s session was unique, as James Franklin and Lane Kiffin shared the podium to answer questions ahead of the big game. The mutual respect is clear between these two head coaches.

Lane Kiffin: James Franklin is the “model” of roster of management in portal era

Roster management is such a large part of college football these days. Either you have a high turnover rate, losing players to the transfer portal, or the NFL. Or, you’re able to retain most of your roster, but that would lead to a more selective approach when using the transfer portal.

Lane Kiffin has been dubbed the “portal king” by many media outlets. But Friday ahead of the Peach Bowl, he expressed why Penn State football James Franklin has handled his roster well.

Kiffin stated, “…I’m not saying this because he’s here, but I think Penn State and Coach Franklin has really been a model of whatever they do of how to do this as far as guys not going in the portal, guys not opting out for games, and they’ve done a phenomenal job over the years of it. I think that’s rare nowadays. I think that I’ve been very critical of the calendar, very critical of the system, even though we try to obviously maximize the system, but it’s really not good.

In talking with a lot of coaches over the last two weeks, there’s been a lot of struggles, and it’s a poor system. You don’t have free agency during the season. That doesn’t happen with no parameters around it. And that’s what we’re dealing with. Talking to coaches around the country dealing with players coming in, they’re going to opt out for the game, or they’re going to transfer if they don’t play this many plays or they don’t get this much money. I mean, what are we talking about?”

Kiffin admires Penn State’s defensive style

It’s not just the roster management that has captured Lane Kiffin’s eye. He also has been impressed with how the Nittany Lions play defense. Kiffin recently said, “Sometimes you see these teams with electric home atmospheres and advantages, like these guys have, like some of the SEC teams, but then they won’t play quite as hard defensively on the road. These guys are not like that. These guys bring an old-school mentality with new-school elite talent.”

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