Update: James Franklin denies accusing Michigan, MSU, OSU of negative recruiting
CHICAGO — James Franklin turned plenty of heads when he was quoted in the Reading Eagle as saying that Michigan, Michigan, Ohio State and Notre Dame negatively recruited against Penn State.
According to Franklin’s quote in the story, those teams used the recent Jerry Sandusky/Joe Paterno developments to say that PSU could face future punishment.
Franklin maintained his stance that he has had to address that issue with recruits. But he’s now saying that he never accused those specific B1G teams of doing that:
I just spoke to James Franklin. Said separate quotes were taken out of context & he never accused MSU, OhioSt or Mich of negative recruiting
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) July 26, 2016
Mark Dantonio and Urban Meyer both addressed the matter on Tuesday. Dantonio assured the B1G media contingency that he had never done such a thing, nor had anyone on his staff to his knowledge.
“That’s not our M.O.,” he said.
Dantonio said that he was “surprised” to read that Franklin had said that. Urban Meyer was also surprised, to say the least. He actually said that when the question was asked on Tuesday at B1G Media Days that it was his first time hearing of the accusation.
Meyer said that he would have to address Franklin personally to discuss that.
According to Franklin, it was one big misquoted, out-of-context comment that was blown way out of proportion. Whatever the case, we’ll never get a definitive answer on who said what and what happens in every recruit’s living room across the country.
So hopefully that’ll put an end to this conversation.