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Watch: Penn State’s James Franklin is not a fan of Friday night games
By Andrew Kulha
Published:
The No 11. Penn State Nittany Lions are 2-0 to start the 2018-19 season and they’ll most likely go 3-0 with an easy home game against Kent State (1-1) this Saturday, but head coach James Franklin is already talking about Week 4.
That’s not to say that he’s overlooking the Golden Flashes, because every game matters in a run to the College Football Playoff and a loss to a inferior team would really hurt PSU’s chances, but Franklin is already talking to the media about the Friday night game against Illinois.
After Kent State, the Nittany Lions will have a short week and they’ll have to prepare to head to Champaign for a Friday night game against a Big Ten opponent. The Illini will be coming off what will likely be a very tough game against USF, but in no way does Franklin see this night game as an advantage for his team.
In fact, he told Audrey Snyder of The Athletic that it really messes up the Nittany Lions’ whole preperation schedule, and it even encroaches on academics.
“We obviously won’t have our day off and right now it looks like we’re going to have a bunch of class conflicts because our guys load up on Monday and we have to practice Monday,” Franklin said when asked to look ahead to next Friday evening.
“It’s another reason why I’m probably not a big fan of the Friday games because it just doesn’t fit our model and causes a lot of academic issues for us.”
https://twitter.com/audsnyder4/status/1040011340797145089
It will be interesting to see if Penn State will truly be impacted by the schedule-shift in Week 4. Chances are it won’t be a huge factor in the game. The talent discrepancy between Penn State and Illinois should take care of that.
Andrew covers the B1G on Saturday Tradition.