Posted on 05/01/2014 11:13:45 AM PDT by Scoutmaster
It was a couple of weeks ago during that beautiful day of the Blue-White game and I was taking goofy videos of tailgaters consuming the sunshine and other things. The mood was festive.
One of the young adults who I featured in a video asked me with enthusiasm how I felt about James Franklin. He was on a recruiting roll. I said levelly that I would've chosen deposed Tennessee Titans coach Mike Munchak instead but we'll see how it goes. The guy contorted his face as if I'd just offered him a bowl of Brussels sprouts. "Are you kidding?" he said. "Look at what Franklin's doing."
I responded that I wouldn't have been comfortable taking the risk of hiring Franklin, that I thought it could possibly be trouble for Penn State down the line. The kid smiled mischievously and said, "Yeah, I know. But I don't care."
And maybe I'm wrong, but that seems to be the prevailing sentiment about Franklin among smitten Penn State fans weary of its old bland brand. They want a little spice in their diet even at the risk of side effects.
The unknown risks reside in Nashville where four onetime Vanderbilt roster members Franklin recruited are accused of raping a VU coed. Their trial is set for August.
In January, when Franklin was hired rather than finalist Munchak and contender Al Golden of Miami, I said that I would not have been able to get much rest were I PSU athletic director Dave Joyner or outgoing president Rod Erickson having made that choice.
I wrote that you had to assume Franklin's part in the case had been thoroughly vetted and he'd come up clean. The Nashville district attorney said so last year. Joyner said so during Franklin's introductory news conference, interjecting this into a question about the case I'd asked of the new coach:
"This whole process of vetting was maybe the most thorough vetting process of any search, perhaps of any position at this university. We utilized multiple independent third-party sources. We used people and contacts that knew James closely including officials and administrators from Vanderbilt."
Joyner mentioned a glowing endorsement of longtime Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow who worked with Franklin there and now is at North Carolina State. He mentioned that the PSU search committee "asked hard questions and got honest and true answers."
Joyner concluded: "My belief is that James Franklin is a man of extremely high character. ... I couldn't be more confident in the character of this man sitting to my left."
That's fine. The problem is, you cannot possibly vet what will emerge from a trial or its run-up. Documents can be released during the progress of the case. Those accused can flip and testify for the prosecution. Any number of unanticipated twists and turns can occur that expose information previously unavailable.
One such surprise occurred on Tuesday when The Tennesseean of Nashville obtained documents containing unflattering comments from the alleged victim in the Vanderbilt rape case regarding Franklin. She stated that the coach contacted her four days after the alleged rape to express sympathy because she had helped him with recruiting. The documents also say that she stated that, at some point, that Franklin asked her to round up 15 pretty girls to help in recruiting, that he knew it was against the rules but everyone in the SEC did it.
Franklin and Penn State released a statement on Tuesday night denying any wrongdoing but refusing further comment in deference to the ongoing case.
That's not going to be good enough. Franklin needs to address these comments.
And it really has nothing to do with Penn State's reputation in light of the Sandusky scandal. It has to do with trust in Franklin himself, that he's the right guy for a university that, way before Sandusky happened, purported to be about "Success With Honor" in capital letters.
The Vanderbilt rape trial should be about the alleged victim, not any brand reputation, either Franklin's or Penn State's. But they are unavoidably intertwined at this point. When the coach is accused by the victim of trying to recruit "hostesses," no matter whether that's an unspoken SEC tradition, that's sort of a problem in the context of a rape case.
This is only one grenade exploding in the vicinity of Dave Joyner's hire. There could be others during the course of this summer. And no one can anticipate when they will detonate. That was my problem with hiring Franklin in the first place.
But most of the Nittany Nation seems to be onboard with the hire. And that's fine, as long as you're willing to dodge the shrapnel. Hey, he's recruiting like a madman, right? He's a dynamic guy full of energy.
Personally, if I were the Penn State hierarchy, at this point, I'd be happy with a few years of boring football, a couple of 7-win seasons and no trouble. But it's not my call.
Maybe that can still happen. Maybe any questions about Franklin presented during the rape case and subsequent trial will be suitably answered. Maybe we can then move on to a novel idea — football.
In so hoping, I dug up Franklin's answer to the rape case question and Penn State's vetting of him back in January:
"It couldn't have been a more thorough interview process. We discussed everything. It was the most challenging thing that I've ever been through, personally, as a father of two daughters, and professionally.
"I think what came out through all this, through their background checks and all the information that they got, is that we were honest, we were up-front, we made decisions quickly and tried to do everything we possibly could to respect the situation with the utmost class."
I'm really hopeful that turns out to be the case. I think I'd enjoy spending an autumn simply covering some games.
In the motion, Vandenburg's attorney asked the court to dismiss the case against Vandenburg or take action against the prosecutors because "crucial and material information to the defense of Vandenburg was destroyed or not preserved."
Claims include alleged deletion of over 50% of surveillance tapes, DNA results from another man, texts between Franklin and the victim, texts among Franklin and coaches, destroyed photos and texts between the victim and her friend, more Franklin 'involvement' stuff . . .."
Most interesting new news is that Franklin visited the rape victim during a medical exam four days after the rape, which he now admits. Now some reports about unkind things victim said about Franklin and investigation.
The lead prosecutor in the case said yesterday he has no reason to believe Penn State coach James Franklin attempted to cover up the crime.
Articles, starting with article from The Tennessean that started it all.
The Tennessean: Attorneys: James Franklin contacted victim in Vanderbilt rape case
NJ.com: Report: Penn State coach James Franklin contacted alleged rape victim at Vanderbilt
Time to see how fast this goes away, and to find out more about undisclosed evidence by Vandy and the prosecutor.
Ping. It begins (but it’s about Vandy and Franklin, folks, not about PSU).
Must leave.
From philly.com (btw, davey jones is an idiot. Always has been. Always will be):
James Franklin talked to a Vanderbilt undergraduate student who was the victim of an alleged rape in the days after she reported the incident, said Tom Thurman, deputy district attorney in Nashville, the man who is prosecuting the former Vanderbilt football players charged with the crime last year.
“He did,” Thurman said Wednesday in a telephone interview, referring to Franklin, now Penn State’s football coach. “I think he and his wife called and said they were praying for her and thinking about her. It was probably a pretty nice thing to do, and it gets thrown up like this.”
What he meant, Thurman said, was that an attorney for one of the defendants suggested in a court filing this week that there was something wrong with the contact between Franklin, then Vanderbilt’s head coach, and the alleged victim.
“Obviously, it wasn’t for any purpose of covering up or anything like that,” Thurman said. “It was showing support, which was a nice thing to do. That’s the only contact I know about.”I think she worked at the [Vanderbilt] football office part-time,” Thurman said. “I think she was on the dance team. It wasn’t really that relevant to us.”
Franklin, 42, was hired as Penn State’s coach in January after three seasons as head coach at Vanderbilt.
“The allegations that I did something wrong are simply not true,” Franklin said Tuesday night in a statement released by Penn State. “I have cooperated fully with the authorities in this matter, but out of respect for the legal process, I am not able to comment any further.”
Four Vanderbilt football players were charged in August with raping and sexually battering a 21-year-old female Vanderbilt student on June 23. A fifth pleaded guilty to trying to cover up the incident. All five were subsequently dismissed from the football program. An Aug. 11 trial date has been set for two of the defendants.
According to a report in the Tennessean, attorneys for one of the former players filed what the newspaper termed “a scorched-earth motion” Tuesday, asking a judge to dismiss the case or reprimand prosecutors for destroying or failing to preserve evidence. The attorneys claimed that evidence provided through discovery included disks with empty file folders and video surveillance in which 55 percent of what was filmed on 14 campus cameras had been deleted.
In a telephone interview with The Inquirer in January, Thurman said he had found no evidence that Franklin “was involved in any way whatsoever in covering it up or anything like that. He’s been up-front with us at all times. There’s no indication of his involvement as far as doing anything improper.”
According to a report Tuesday in the Tennessean, the court filing claimed that at a date that was unclear, apparently before the alleged rape, Franklin had another meeting with the alleged victim.
“Coach Franklin called her in for a private meeting and told her he wanted her to get 15 pretty girls together and form a team to assist with the recruiting even though he knew it was against the rules,” according to the filing. “He added that all the other colleges did it.”
“I don’t even know if that’s illegal,” Thurman said Wednesday, referring to NCAA rules. “I think several SEC programs have hostess-type programs. I know UT [Tennessee] got in trouble having them go out of state,” to a high school football game.
As for a portion of the filing that suggested Franklin’s cellphone records had been lost, Thurman said, “I don’t think we’ve got Coach Franklin’s cellphone. We didn’t have any legal right to get their cellphones. There’s no evidence of a cover-up. We didn’t go out and get everybody’s cellphone who was on the Vanderbilt campus.”
David Jones is a flaming left wing liberal, who praises all things homosexual. He is one of those clowns who demands the renaming of the Washington Redskins because the name is soooo ofensive. He is also a gun control proponent, feminist rights, abortion rights, global warming alarmist, yada, yada etc, you get the picture.
Stop! You’re interrupting scoutmaster’s Joe Paterno grave dance. That piece could have been written by Satan, and he would have posted it.
FlJoePa: I wouldn't have posted something by Satan; I would have posted the article by Tony Gonzalez, linked above. That's what I originally attempted to do. That attempt was blocked and I wasn't allowed even to excerpt The Tennessean because of a copyright complaint.
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