Penn State's James Franklin: 'Red tape' delaying contract extension

Penn State coach James Franklin said Wednesday afternoon his new contract, a six-year extension agreed upon in early December, has not been signed because of some “red tape” — but should be finalized in the near future.

“As you can imagine, these contracts aren’t like three pages of notes,” he said during a news conference at Beaver Stadium. “So it’s about language, about making sure what Penn State is comfortable with, what we’re comfortable with, and that takes time.

“I think that’s going to happen soon, but I also know there’s some things kind of within Penn State and things like that that I don’t know what the process is, so I don’t want to sit here and say the time or the date. But it’s agreed upon, and it should be here very soon.”

Athletic director Sandy Barbour told reporters in late December to “hopefully ” expect the release of Franklin’s contract details around early January. The Penn State board of trustees’ Committee on Compensation approved the contract Dec. 6.

Barbour told reporters in December the goal is for Penn State to maintain its standing as one of the Big Ten’s top three — and one of the nation’s top 10 — in head coach’s salary, assistant coaches’ salary pool and academic services.

Because Franklin’s contract has not been signed, it’s not known how much his extension is worth. But based on Barbour’s stated goals and USA Today’s list of coaches salaries, Franklin should see at least a $420,000 increase in his annual salary.

His base pay in 2019 was $5.65 million, which made him the third-highest paid Big Ten coach behind Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh ($7.5M) and Purdue’s Jeff Brohm ($6.6M). But that also put him at No. 11 in the nation, right behind Florida’s Dan Mullen ($6.07M).

The university is not legally required to release the salaries of the assistant coaches because it’s technically a “state-related university” and not a public university. So it releases only the salaries of the top 30 employees.

So once Franklin’s contract is signed, reporters and the public will discover how much the head coach is set to make. But he was adamant Wednesday there were no hold-ups with the contract and declined to characterize its release as a delay.

“There really was no hold-ups or concerns or issues on either party,” he said. “It was just kind of going through all the red tape and the verbiage of contracts like that.”

Franklin replaced predecessor Bill O’Brien 2014 on a six-year contract that started by paying him $4 million that season. He signed a six-year extension in 2017 worth an average of $5.78 million annually before agreeing to the most recent six-year extension in December.

In his time with the Nittany Lions, he holds a 56-23 record with six straight bowl appearances and four straight top-20 rankings. Over the last four seasons, he has appeared in half of the New Year’s Six in the Rose, Fiesta and Cotton bowls.