Urban Meyer suggests Penn State already knows James Franklin's replacement

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Does Penn State have someone in mind?

“When you fire a coach, when his record was 104-45 and was in the Rose Bowl, Peach Bowl, and a score away from playing for a national championship, and 16 days ago he could have had the possible No. 1 team in the country, I don’t think you make that move, with a $75 million expense coming, unless you know who you’re gonna hire,” he said.

Usually, when a college football program fires a head coach, it goes through a long process of hiring a search firm at considerable expense, who in turn brings the athletic director a list of possible candidates.

“The reason they do that is because with those types of schools, you have to go out and search who’s interested. Because those aren’t top-five or top-ten jobs,” Meyer explained on The Triple Option podcast. “Penn State is a whole different animal.”

He added: “In that way, the head coach at the other school can say he hasn’t really spoken to anyone and the AD can say, ‘I’ve never talked to that coach.’ Because he hasn’t. It’s all through third-party stuff. They get the list together and go start recruiting or whatever when that’s done. At Penn State, I think it’s a whole different animal.”

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Then came Franklin’s dismissal, and Penn State’s race to replace him. While several big names have been connected to the vacancy -- from Curt Cignetti to Matt Rhule to Marcus Freeman to Matt Campbell -- the school is yet to indicate any direction.

But if Urban Meyer is right, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a plan in place already.

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