In Reply to: Re: About James Franklin posted by PittsburghBuckeye on October 06, 2025 at 12:53:38
Yeah, yeah, due to the funk that has been UCLA football over most of 25 years,
the trend has been to diefy Terry Donahue, whose laudable accomplishments
non-the-less always fell short as he approached the pinnacle challenges.
Like Franklin. Plenty of wins, plenty of talent, 151-74-8 in 20 years
(Franklin: Penn State 104-44. 128-59 career)
No Cigar…
With Donahue’s lower bar standard for season success being the Rose Bowl, he achieved that only four times in 20 years, losing seven (7) fimes to USC when a win would've automatically awarded the Rose Bowl to UCLA (with the 1985 loss UCLA still got the Rose Bowl after subsequent “help,” improbable upsets by WSU and Arizona-in the following week).
More significantly, Donahue had 3, possibly 4 seasons where a national championship was in UCLA’s grasp…
1976, 1980 (AP eligible), 1982, 1988. Yet all fumbled due to untimely or similarly confounding trap game blunders to those experienced by Franklin.
Like 1980, with a #2 ranked team where #1 had already lost that day, inexplicably blew the second half to a poor losing record Arizona team …or undefeated
#1 ranked in 1988 with Troy Aikman and 11 future NFL PLAYERS historically face planting to WSU at home…
-Franklin Mint Dixie Cups