Penn State head football coach James Franklin knows that the environment for a visiting team at Milan Puskar Stadium is nothing to sneeze at.
Franklin sat down with the Cover 3 Podcast at Big 10 Media Days on Wednesday to answer questions, and when asked about what he’s most excited to see from his team before the season starts, he took time to highlight the challenge of a Week 1 road trip to Morgantown. That August 31st battle between West Virginia and Penn State has been pegged as a must-watch non-conference game for the 2024 season, and will host the FOX Big Noon pre-game show that day.
Franklin spent two separate stints as an assistant coach at Maryland (from 2000-2004 and again from 2008-2010) and coached for the Terrapins in four different games at Milan Puskar Stadium. His team went 1-3 in those appearances, the last one a 31-17 loss to the Mountaineers in 2010. Meanwhile, WVU is 7-17-1 all-time against Penn State at home, with the last matchup between the two in Morgantown coming in 1992 -- a 40-26 loss for WVU.
“We open in a great venue,” Franklin said. “I was at the University of Maryland, we played at West Virginia a bunch of times -- that's a tough place to play.”
Franklin also complimented the support the state has for their flagship university, noting that without any professional sports organizations in West Virginia, a lot of attention and support ends up going towards WVU. He understands that this can result in raucous home crowds in Morgantown.
“There's no pro team, it's all about the Mountaineers. That’s a hornet’s nest we’ll be walking into,” Franklin said.
Despite his poor record coaching against the Mountaineers at Milan Puskar Stadium, his did gain a decisive 38-15 victory over WVU last year at Beaver Stadium in State College. Franklin also knows the team he saw in Week 1 last year drastically improved by the end of the season, and will likely be a stiffer challenge in 2024.
“They ended the season on a real positive note,” Franklin said.
That consensus is shared by Cover 3 Podcast host Chip Patterson, who recently shared his opinion that the Mountaineers have a “quiet confidence” building inside their program. However, Franklin believes previous early-season road trips in recent years have helped prepare many within the program for such environments.
“I think our opening games at Auburn, even at Purdue to open the season, were tough games,” he said. “So I think those things helped prepare us for this.”