When James Franklin took the reins at Virginia Tech in mid-November 2025, it looked like he was stepping into a nearly impossible situation. Fired just 38 days earlier from Penn State after a tough season, Franklin walked into Blacksburg with the early signing period looming just two weeks away - and without a single commitment in the Hokies' 2026 class.
But what happened next wasn’t just a quick turnaround - it was one of the most dramatic recruiting flips college football has seen in years.
Instead of scrambling to identify and chase a brand-new crop of prospects across the country, Franklin played to his strengths. He leaned hard into the relationships he’d spent years building during his time in Happy Valley.
That meant bringing in familiar faces - not just on the field, but behind the scenes. He reassembled much of his trusted Penn State recruiting staff and got to work.
The strategy? Simple, but bold: go after the players he already knew, the ones he’d recruited personally to Penn State. And it worked.
In just 12 days, Virginia Tech landed 17 commitments - 11 of them former Penn State pledges. That group included some serious firepower, headlined by quarterback Troy Huhn and running back Messiah Mickens, both of whom had been marquee names in the Nittany Lions’ class. Add in ESPN 300 talents like Davion Brown and Pierce Petersohn, and suddenly, a class that had been nowhere on the radar was now projected to land inside ESPN’s top 25 heading into national signing day.
Mickens, for one, never lost touch with Franklin - even after the coaching change. “He was checking up on me probably once or twice a week,” Mickens said.
“He kept it real with me. That just showed my family what kind of coach he was.
The whole time, he was telling us he was going to get a job somewhere soon.”
That kind of consistency - the personal connection, the honesty, the long-term investment - became the backbone of Franklin’s pitch. He wasn’t selling a flashy rebuild or making empty promises.
He was speaking from the heart, banking on trust and continuity. And for a lot of these players, that mattered more than logos or facilities.
“It was unusual and stressful,” Franklin admitted. “I don’t want to go through it again. But it ended up working out really well, hopefully for these kids and their families, but also for Virginia Tech.”
Meanwhile, the fallout in State College was immediate and harsh. Without a head coach in place, Penn State’s once-promising class collapsed. The momentum that had been building evaporated almost overnight - much of it rerouted straight to Blacksburg.
Franklin knows this is just the beginning. “The good thing is there’s a ton of excitement to get Virginia Tech back to where it was,” he said. “But there’s still a lot of work and tough decisions that need to be made.”
Still, in a sport where recruiting is often about who can adapt the fastest and connect the deepest, Franklin just pulled off one of the most impressive pivots we’ve seen in recent memory. He didn’t just salvage a recruiting class - he flipped the script on Virginia Tech’s future.
By betting on familiarity, urgency, and the relationships he’d spent years cultivating, Franklin not only preserved the work he started at Penn State - he redefined what’s possible in a late-cycle recruiting push. And just like that, the Hokies are back in the national conversation.