Who is James Franklin?
By Chris Lee
Sports and Entertainment Nashville

The first impression the scrawny kid from the suburbs of Philly made on East Stroudsburg University's's football coaches was not that he would one day become a coach but that he needed a lot of coaching.

East Stroudsburg coach Denny Douds had spotted James Franklin a couple hours down the road at Neshaminy High and liked what he saw of the quarterback in 1991. It's fair to say that the now-71-year-old Douds, who has been the Division II school's head coach since '74, has a knack for spotting players, given his 232-162-3 record.

But there were some issues. First of all, ESU ran a spread offense, which was rare at the time.  As Douds remembers, Franklin had thrown just 38 passes as a senior. And then there was this assessment from offensive coordinator Mike Terwilliger.

“The first thing I said to him when he was throwing the football (was that) the nose of the football was up in the air. He had the craziest release I ever saw,” Terwilliger recalls.

But there was something else about Franklin that made Terwilliger want to work with him.

“When James came to us, now, he was a bigger than-life guy,” Terwilliger says. “A million-dollar smile on his face. Tremendous passion and enthusiasm.”

Time was on Franklin's side from a developmental standpoint. Sophomore Bret Comp had just taken the Warriors to the playoffs and would start for two more years. So Franklin played sparingly in a backup role before starring in 1993 and '94.

Almost 20 years after his career finished, his name is all over the ESU record books. His 5,764 yards of total offense were sixth in school history, and he's the school's single-game record-holder for rushing yards by a quarterback in a game (150; that earned him a mention in Sports Illustrated). He was even a candidate for the 1994 Harlon Hill Award, Division II's equivalent of the Heisman Trophy.

“He may have been the best scrambling quarterback to play in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference,” says Douds.

But like almost all Division II players, an NFL career was not in the cards for Franklin. So what came next?

You'd think that coaches like Douds and Terwilliger could spot a future coach in a heartbeat. Both say that Franklin didn't immediately stand out as a person necessarily destined for coaching, but they knew he'd make a splash at something.

“When we were 19 years old, I didn't know he was going to be a head coach because that was a whole other topic at the time,” adds Mike Santella, ESU's offensive line coach, who was Franklin's college roommate and now his best friend. “But I knew he was going to be a president or a senator. Whatever this guy put his mind to, he was going to be a special guy. He's a good-looking man, he has a very good gift of gab, his enthusiasm is unbelievable.”

Santella says that Franklin's original plan was to work in psychology, but he instead went after a coaching job within the PSAC at Kutztown, where he worked with the receivers for a season. But something didn't feel right to Franklin, who soon had a heart-to-heart with Douds. His old coach offered him not only a graduate assistant's job at ESU but a place to live in his home as well.

The two soon settled into a routine that cemented their bond further, as Franklin would sit with Douds and have nightly talks over Klondike ice cream bars.

“We just talked about everything under the sun,” Douds remembers. “We talked a lot of football, we talked about things that happened in life, and it was thoroughly an enjoyable time.” From his career as a player through his year as a coach, Franklin spent five years at East Stroudsburg and had gotten to know the three men well. They tell endless stories of his energy, passion, competitiveness and character.

“We never really got into any real trouble… but James certainly knew how to have a good time,” Santella says.

Terwilliger considers Franklin part of his family, though he says the two are about as opposite as could be. “I'm one of those guys who loves hunting and fishing and country music, and shoot, you ask James about hunting and fishing and country music, you're talking another language!” he laughs.

Terwilliger recounted stories of Franklin's practicing his first two days of college with an abscessed tooth before Terwilliger dragged him to a dentist's office, and another of Franklin breaking a neighbor's finger with a crushing spike in a “friendly” game of volleyball. “He never got invited back to another Memorial Day volleyball game in East Stroudsburg,” he recalls.

His favorite Franklin story involves a case of mistaken identity involving Franklin and a celebrity.

“Our line coach was best friends with Dwayne Johnson “The Rock” (Dwayne Johnson is a WWE wrestler-turned-movie star whose on-stage persona was called “The Rock.”), and “The Rock” was coming to town. So my friend says, 'Hey, “the Rock” is coming to Twig's place,'” he recalls.

“So my daughters come home from elementary school and the school bus is leaving out, and it so happened that James Franklin says, 'Hey, let's play some pickup basketball in (Terwilliger's) driveway.' While Franklin played in the front yard, the bus happened to drive by. The whole bus thought he was The Rock. So Frank might be the big guy (in Nashville), but never bigger than the people who thought he was “The Rock” here at the Terwilliger house!”

The problem with being close to Franklin is keeping up with him. His energy level is legendary in Nashville already, and Santella insists that Franklin doesn't need caffeinated beverages or energy drinks to keep going. He relates a story from a visit to see Franklin recently.

“I was down in Nashville this summer and I got there one night like 2 o'clock in the morning, and he was still up. He said, 'You'd better get to bed because we're getting up at a quarter of five. We got up at a quarter of five (for three days straight),” Santella says.

“When I drove there from up here it was about a 12- or 13-hour drive and I had a lot of time to reflect about our visit… what's interesting is that I was in Nashville about four days and we never watched TV once. I asked James one day, 'Where's the remote to your TV, I want to watch Sports Center.' He said, “I don't know what to say. I don't watch a whole lot of TV.'”

Going to a bowl game in a coach's first year at Vanderbilt had been unprecedented until Franklin did it last year. So he's finishing in the Top 25 in recruiting in the Rivals.com era, and is on schedule to do that this winter, should he hold most of the committed players he has in the fold thus far.

Having that sort of success at Vanderbilt can be a bit of a curse, because two things always come up: the coach must be cheating, or he'll probably be leaving soon for a better job. His best friend has heard the first charge, and it upsets him.

“You're always going to have people out there that, when someone's successful, they're going to say, 'He's got to be cheating.' That's not the case at all. He does things the right way. It's super-important to him and his staff to dot every 'I,' to cross every 'T,' to be compliant to the nth degree of doing things the right way, because people are going to say, 'Hey, I can't believe it, it's Vanderbilt, he's having an unbelievable time enough, he must be cutting corners,' and that couldn't be further from the truth,” Santella says adamantly.

“That's something he prides himself on. It wouldn't be worth it for him. It would be cheating himself if he reached his goal and he cheated getting there.”

As to the second, the topic of switching jobs never came up. However, Santella offers an interesting choice of words when asked to describe the kind of person that Franklin is.

“One word, he is loyal. He has never forgotten where he came from, he never forgot what got him there, he never forgot the fact that, hey, I was a guy that went to East Stroudsburg University and I'm never going to forget that. What got me here was my hard work, my integrity, my dedication and my loyalty,” he says.

“And those are characteristics that he still has as a friend. He's extremely loyal. He's giving, he's generous, he's a family guy and he's my best friend.”

The next big question is whether Franklin can sustain that success at Vandy. Will he be the “Game Changer?” The guy who's coached more Division II games than anyone in history has an opinion there, too.

“There are all kinds of coaches who are successful, and the only common denominator of successful coaches is that they have the ability to communicate with the people that they're involved with at that particular time. And if he has a passion and love of people, they're pretty high up there, too. And so he has all the ingredients, and he's a pretty sharp guy,” Douds says.

“He can be as good as anybody in the country.”