By Chris Buchignani
Will Patrick Kraft, Penn State’s Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics (what we used to simply call the Athletic Director back in simpler, less soullessly corporate days) outthink himself in making the biggest hire of his career? Conventional wisdom in some corners of Nittany Nation suggests his path forward is clear and has been for some time: Matt Rhule, almost from the moment he led his upstart Temple Owls to an upset win over a sanction-hobbled team of Nittany Lions in early 2015, has been fated to one day take the reins at his alma mater.
But is Rhule, a Happy Valley native and disciple of Joe Paterno as both player and coach, a man who Kraft has hired as a head football coach once before (at Temple) and with whom he vacations regularly, an obvious slam dunk to take over at Penn State, or is he the lazy choice? The online chattering class – Twitter addicts and message board regulars who represent a vocal minority but also play a vital role in driving conversation around the program – seem underwhelmed by the possibility of hiring Rhule, if not downright hostile toward the prospect.
Some of this may simply be a case of familiarity breeding contempt. Again, the former Little Lion who went on to play and coach for Paterno before assembling an impressive resume heading up multiple college programs has, in some circles, felt like the presumptive coach-in-waiting for over a decade, and Rhule’s personal relationship with Kraft only intensified this feeling (though it could also complicate things on the professional side of a results-driven business). Rhule’s distressing 2-23 record against the Top 25, a poor career showing that mirrors a top critique of James Franklin, cannot be ignored. Yes, these losses came at upstart or rebuilding programs, but the unfavorable comparisons with Franklin’s struggles against top teams will (and should) be unavoidable.
If Kraft does indeed take the easy way out and hires his buddy, the State College kid “with a Penn State heart,” there will be nowhere for him to hide. Some will celebrate the choice, while others will loathe it. In the end, all will render final judgement based on the win-loss record. Among the many options for Penn State football’s next head honcho, however, none offers less margin for error than Rhule. His successful track record of reclamation at Temple and Baylor – with an incomplete, but nevertheless promising picture in Year Three at Nebraska – give him a credible claim on the job only enhanced by his town and gown connections. But the misgivings around his terrible numbers in ranked matchups cannot be ignored, especially given the key role similar stats played in Franklin’s dismissal. The warning signs are glaring, his birthplace or alma mater be damned.
For evidence of the perils inherent to the “favored son comes home” story, one must look no further than Rhule’s predecessor at his current gig with the Cornhuskers. When Nebraska welcomed home Scott Frost, who quarterbacked the Huskers to the national championship in 1997, the fit seemed as obvious as it was ideal. Here you had one of the program’s great players on top of the college coaching world after leading UCF to an undefeated “championship” season in 2017, capped off with a bowl win over Auburn. Who better to rescue the fading blue blood than one of their own, the seeming miracle worker who had engineered the Golden Knights’ remarkable turnaround from 0-12 the year before he arrived to 13-0 just two seasons later?
As close followers of college football know, the reality of Scott’s tenure fell well short of the storybook script that had seemed written in the stars the day the school announced his homecoming. His tenure began with a program-worst six straight losses to open the 2018 season, and Frost team’s never won more than five games in his four years and change on the sidelines. The Frost era in Lincoln mercifully ended in 2022, following a miserable 1-2 start that included an overseas loss to Northwestern and humiliating home defeat at the hands of lowly Georgia Southern.
In the aftermath of Frost’s departure, press accounts of his coaching regime painted a less than flattering picture of his competence and professionalism. Although Rhule, to his credit, has made overtures to repair the rift and to welcome Scott Frost back as an honored letterman, the damage, however, cannot be wholly undone. Frost will never again enjoy unbridled adoration among the Husker faithful.
For every Kirby Smart or Jim Harbaugh, alumni coaches able to complete the fairy tale arc of delivering titles to alma mater, there are also a handful of Scott Frosts, “can’t-miss” kids who end up letting the family down, invariably tarnishing their own legacies and straining the bonds that brought them back in the first place. The sport’s landscape is likewise littered with cautionary tales of once-proud programs – from Alabama to Michigan, Texas to Tennessee – spending years, and even decades, in the wilderness lurching from one failed coaching hire to the next in pursuit of past glory. Ironically, the Cornhuskers are perhaps the prime example of his phenomenon, having twice fired successful coaches, in Frank Solich and Bo Pelini, who were unable to turn the championship corner, only to employ successors who fared far worse.
As Pat Kraft seeks to avoid dooming Penn State to a fate similar to that of Nebraska, should he opt for the safe and obvious choice of poaching the Huskers’ latest anointed savior? In declaring James Franklin a necessary casualty in the pursuit of national championships, he has narrowed the eye of the needle through which he must thread the most perilous, impactful decision he will make in his career. If Rhule would somehow defy an established pattern of failure on the biggest stage that seems hauntingly reminiscent of Franlin’s, Kraft would be lauded as a bold and visionary leader, the man who recognized that it took a Lion to restore the luster to Penn State. If not though, he’d have a long way to fall, and no one to blame but himself.
Chris Buchignani is cohost of The Obligatory PSU Podcast and The Obligatory PSU Pregame Show, entering its 10th season this Fall. He teaches a course on Penn State Football History for Penn State OLLI.
