3 most overrated Big Ten football coaches ahead of 2024

1. James Franklin, Penn State

No one quite jumps back and forth between properly rated and overrated as much as Penn State head coach James Franklin. He is truly an enigma.

Franklin will put together a season that blows everyone away like he did in 2022 with an 11-2 finish and a Rose Bowl victory and then he'll respond by losing the biggest games on the schedule (Michigan, Ohio State) before losing the New Year's Six bowl like he did in 2023. He lost all three of his biggest games and beat up on the opponents that he was expected to.

In the two years before that impressive 2022 campaign, Franklin was 11-11. That's just unacceptable for "one of the best head coaches in the country".

The problem is consistency with Franklin. He'll win seven games (2014, 2015) and then reel off three 11-win seasons in four years (2016-19) before going 11-11 over two seasons (2020, 2021). He's pieced together back-to-back double-digit-win seasons but the last time he did that, he more more than nine games just once in the following four years.

For Franklin to truly live up to his billing as an elite head coach, he needs to consistently win 10-plus games and probably win more than one Big Ten title in 10 years. That task just got tougher with the additions of USC, Washington, Oregon, and UCLA, though.