James Franklin was in a joking mood and tried to deflect early questions about Penn State’s looming Week 8 trip to Columbus. The head coach is well aware that next weekend is a massive top-10 showdown with Ohio State, but he wasn’t ready to dive into comments on the matchup quite yet.

After the win over UMass, Franklin noted the media is welcome to ask any question, but he’s not necessarily going to answer stuff related to Ohio State. He pointed to the fact the media group will be back with the head just a few days from now on Tuesday.

“You can ask because you guys do that anyway,” said Franklin. “There’s things you know I’m not gonna answer. You can ask, but Tuesday we’re gonna spend some time together. We’re gonna get back together as a group. I think we do that every Tuesday, right? Then Wednesday we’re going to get back together.”

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Franklin particularly pointed to wanting just one brief stretch of normalcy before turning the calendar to Week 8. Once Sunday night hits, he knows the talk will be on the Buckeyes.

“I just want to have like a few hours of normalcy and like hang out with my wife, my buddy Mikey from Pittsburgh who comes to all the games. I want the players to enjoy it for a couple of hours,” Franklin explained. “Because as we know, once Sunday night hits and my tweet goes out, that’s all anyone is going to want to talk about. So I just want a couple hours of normalcy.

“Now, this a long — what’s the word? The long diatribe I just gave, and Neil’s just staring at me the whole time and it hasn’t changed that he’s going to ask this question.”

The good news for Franklin is his team is 6-0 and clicking heading into Week 8. It goes without saying that Ohio State will be by far the biggest test for Penn State, but the Nittany Lion offense and defensive front are bigger animals than the Buckeyes have seen to date.

Week 8’s massive showdown is set for FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff with a 12 p.m. ET kickoff.