ESPN ranks Penn State's James Franklin No. 9 college football coach

Members of the Penn State Nittany Lions may understandably have some chips on their shoulders heading into the regular-season opener at the Purdue Boilermakers on for Sept. 1. 

Penn State is not ranked in the preseason USA Today/American Football Coaches Association Coaches Poll, and Tyler Donohue noted for 247Sports on Monday that the Nittany Lions are also absent from the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll for the first time in six years. Despite those realities, ESPN recently named PSU quarterback Sean Clifford among the "25 most important players" for the upcoming College Football Playoff race. 

The Worldwide Leader also believes Penn State has a top-10 head coach in James Franklin, who agreed to a new 10-year contract set to run through 2031 last fall. For a piece published Tuesday morning, Adam Rittenberg of ESPN ranked Franklin the ninth-best college football coach among his "national contenders" this summer. 

"If this were 2020, Franklin could appear higher," Rittenberg explained. "He had guided Penn State to 40 wins and three AP top-9 finishes in the previous four seasons. The past two years have hurt his stock a bit, as Penn State has split 22 games and gone 8-10 in Big Ten play. But Franklin has shown he can break through, winning the conference in 2016 and nearly getting to the CFP. His work at Vanderbilt -- 24-15 overall with three bowl appearances and two AP Top 25 finishes -- looks even more remarkable as the years go by." 

Franklin holds an overall record of 67-34 across his eight seasons with Penn State. In late July, ESPN's Pete Thamel noted that "no program has come closer to breaking through to the College Football Playoff without actually crashing into the field than Penn State." The Nittany Lions won the Big Ten in the fall of 2016 but were ultimately snubbed by the CFP committee.