James Franklin found a new way to run out the clock on Monday, and it happened on a Zoom call.
Michael Howes of The Baltimore Sun opened his turn at Virginia Tech’s press conference the normal way, with “Hey, coach,” and then identified himself. Franklin came back with “Hey, Michael.”
Standard stuff so far. Then Howes started asking his question, and Franklin said it again. “Hey, Michael.” Howes kept going. “Hey, Michael.” Franklin was not going to let the question happen until he got a greeting back.
Howes, understandably, had no idea what was going on. He got flustered and asked whether Franklin could even hear him, because from his end this sounded like a man whose audio had frozen on a two-word loop.
The apology nobody needed to write
Howes later cleared it up on X with a post that is funnier than the actual bit. “James Franklin really wanted to know how my day was this morning,” he wrote. “Couldn’t see him on Zoom and thought the audio was glitching. My apologies, James.”
That is the detail that makes this. Howes could not see Franklin. There was no face to read, no smirk to indicate a coach was doing a small comedy routine. Just a voice repeating two words while a reporter tried to do his job and quietly wondered if his internet was broken.
Was it a teaching moment about manners? A joke? Mild power play? Probably some blend of all of it, which is what makes it interesting rather than outrageous. Franklin is 54 and has been standing at podiums for a long time. He knows exactly how a room works and he knows what happens when he decides the room runs on his rules.
Small things from head coaches are never just small things
On its own this is a nothing story, a weird 20 seconds on a Monday. In context it is the second consecutive week Franklin has turned a routine appearance into a talking point. The week before, he accused officials of hitting Virginia Tech with an “un-American” penalty, which is a big swing of a word for a flag in a football game.
Put them together and you get a picture of a coach who is comfortable being the loudest thing in the room in his first season at a new school. Some of that is probably deliberate. New coaches set tone, and part of setting tone is showing everyone, including the media, that the building operates on your terms now.
The good news for Franklin is that he has the record to carry it. Virginia Tech is 2-0. Nobody minds a coach with a personality when the coach is winning, and quirky press conference behavior from a 2-0 team reads as confidence.
The catch is that the same behavior ages differently at 2-4. The greeting bit that plays as charming in September plays as prickly in November, and the “un-American” line that sounds like a coach defending his players starts sounding like a coach looking for somewhere else to point. Franklin surely knows this better than anyone writing about it.
For now, enjoy it. College football is at its best when the people running it are a little strange, and a head coach refusing to take a question until a reporter says hello back is the kind of small human weirdness the sport does not produce enough of.
Just say hey, Michael. It is easier.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.