Penn State Football Touches Down in Orlando for Jan. 1 Bowl Game

ORLANDO – Penn State returns to the Citrus Bowl for the first time since the 2009 season when the Nittany Lions (9-3) take on SEC foe Kentucky (9-3) at Camping World Stadium in Orlando on Tuesday, Jan. 1 at 1 p.m. (ET). The game will air on ABC.

The No. 12 Nittany Lions arrived in Orlando on Wednesday and head coach James Franklin held an initial press conference. In it he disclosed, among other things, that backup quarterback Tommy Stephens will not play against the No. 14 Wildcats.

Q: James, where are you on your game prep? What do you need to accomplish in the next week?
A: We’re usually always pretty much done before we come down. All of the scripting for the week is done. Game planning is done. Obviously, we’ll go back and tweak a few things, but all of the scripting for the week should be done, the game plan should all be done. We need to make sure our timing is right because we haven’t done anything in a week. Our normal Sunday practice will be a little bit different. We’ll do some passing game to make sure our timing is back. We’ve already done a Tuesday practice, a game week practice, we’ve already done a Wednesday game week practice. We did two bonus special teams practices. Typically, when you look at bowl games, it’s ball security and special teams that usually mess people up. So we did two special teams-specific practices, got two game plan-specific practices in. We’ll do our normal week, but the practices will be a little bit shorter. Just make sure our timing is right.

Q: Is a Sunday practice tomorrow for you guys?
A: Yes. We were actually trying to practice today so we could have our normal day off tomorrow. That’s what we wanted to do, but just this travel day, getting here, the meetings, all the things we have to do as bowl responsibilities, it would’ve been too much. That’s why we’ll shorten the practices the rest of the week, just a little bit, because we’re basically going six-straight days.

Q: Kentucky played Mississippi State, who has some connections to your program. How much did you take out of the film of that game?
A: Really valuable film. What you’re always trying to do is breakdown and study similar-like opponents. People that run a similar defensive scheme as you, people that run a similar offensive scheme. Obviously, Mississippi State, it’s unusual, because both sides are similar. Their defense and their offense have a lot of similarities. That film was very valuable for us. We spent a lot of time studying that.

Q: Did you talk to Joe Moorhead or Bob Shoop? Do coaches talk about this stuff when you’re friends with other coaches and have common opponents?
A: I talk to [Joe Moorhead] fairly often, usually text messages, things like that. Not a whole lot specific to the game, a little bit, but as you can imagine, they’re getting ready for their game. Neither one of us had a lot of time to spend with each other to talk about anything other than Christmas with our families or the bowl games we’re trying to get prepared for. But yes, there was definitely value in the film.

Q: There’s a lot of things to do here, but this is a business trip. How do you balance all of that?
A: It’s not strictly just a business trip. It needs to be a balance of both. We talk all the time about having a mature football team and I want them to enjoy this. This is a great experience and they have to be able to balance both. When it’s time to enjoy themselves and have fun, go do that. When it’s time to be in meetings and be at practice, we have to be able to do those things as well. We manage those things as well in terms of curfews and things like that, obviously as we get closer to the game, the tighter and tighter our curfew gets. We have to balance it. I want them to enjoy Orlando. I want them to enjoy the bowl experience. I want to limit distractions and then when it’s time to work, it’s time to work. We talk about that a lot. I expect our guys to do a good job with that.

Q: Can even the weather be a distraction?
A: I wouldn’t call it a distraction. To be honest, its very similar to practicing in our indoor facility. I wouldn’t say that. I think in a lot of ways, it gives our guys a boost from a morale standpoint and an excitement standpoint. You get off the plane and it’s a positive.

Q: Your family hit up Disneyland at the Rose Bowl and now you’re here near Disney World. Are you looking forward to hitting the double with your kids?
A: Yeah, literally all of our bowl trips are based upon where our kids can vacation. Our kids were fired up about this. My wife has an entire plan, I know a lot of the coaches’ wives do. I’ll tell you, that’s probably the biggest difference in these bowl trips, for coaches and families are very different. I would say they’re very different for even the coaches and players. We try to manage that as much as we possibly can. As I said, getting all of the scripting for practice and all the organization stuff done ahead of time so we’re not sitting there watching film until 11:00 at night and we’re not up at the crack of dawn. Most of that work’s been done. It allows the coaches a little time and freedom. Obviously, the wives and kids have a different experience than the coaches do. I would say for the coaches, this is a business trip. For the players, I want it to be 70/30 or 60/40 in terms of football to fun. For the wives and kids, it’s about 99 percent fun and one percent business.

Q: How important is that one percent since you get so little time with your families during the season?
A: I think really the last three or four days. This is the first time we’ve spent Christmas at home in a while. That was nice. I would trade it, don’t get me wrong. I would trade it for a different situation in terms of a football perspective. But the time’s been awesome. The time with family has been awesome. The time at Christmas and being able to take my girls Christmas shopping. That was really cool. We usually don’t get a whole lot of time to do those types of things. It’s been good, it really has, but now that we’ve arrived at the hotel, for the coaches, we have a lot of work to do. We’ll go back through all the game plans and the scripts and make sure the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed, things like that. I think we do a pretty good job of balancing. I’ve worked for people that it’s not. I’ve literally got off a plane, never gone to the hotel, and gone straight to practice and done two-a-days at a bowl. I tell the players that and they look at me like I have eight heads, but I did that. I’ve also gotten beat pretty badly because I think we were worn out by the time the game came. Over my 23 years of doing this, stealing from people, different ideas that I thought were good and things that I’d do different. Then in my eight years as head coach, same thing, learning from things we’ve done well in the past and things we can improve on. Then having a sport scientist and nutritionist, all of those things have helped to bounce ideas off and make some modifications. That’s one of the modifications we made after talking to the sport scientist about practicing today and having off tomorrow like a normal week, we’ve never done that before. But we’ll do that moving forward, next year and the years forward.

Q: Academically, you were pretty happy the last time we talked. At this point, are there any players you need to be concerned about?
A: No, we’re in great shape from that perspective. We actually had six guys with a 4.0, which is as good as we’ve had. There’s a couple grades we’re waiting on, but no, we’re in really good shape from an academic perspective. Everybody has been able to travel. We had some guys that transferred and because of transferring, they’re ineligible, so they weren’t able to travel. Besides that, I’m real pleased with what we’ve done academically since we came to Penn State. Todd Kulka, Rosie Tarnowski and that entire staff have done a phenomenal job for us. So summer school and things like that, we’re always getting ahead and not trying to catch up. We’ve been strong in that area, which as you know, we take a lot of pride in, myself, my staff and the Penn State community.

Q: Do you expect everyone to be playing?
A: We’ll have one guy that won’t be here, since you asked, is Tommy Stevens. Tommy had an injury about the midpoint of the season that you guys weren’t aware of. We had a lot of discussions about when’s the right time to have the surgery, but Tommy’s family and the staff decided the best time to have the surgery would be once his academics finished up and he got through the season. He was able to do that and now this will allow him, hopefully, to be full-go for spring ball.