By any sane measure, James Franklin was a successful college football coach. He helped rebuild Penn State from the ashes of NCAA sanctions following the Jerry Sandusky scandal, turned Saquon Barkley and Micah Parsons into household names, and won 10 or more games six times in 11 years.

He made Penn State respectable again. Stable. Relevant.

But college football isn’t sane. It’s an arms race disguised as a sport — a theater of excess where “pretty darn good” is just another way of saying “fired.”

And now, just two weeks after being unbeaten and ranked No. 3 in the country, Franklin’s gone — and $50 million of Penn State’s money just went up in smoke to make it happen.

That sound you hear from Gainesville and Tallahassee? It’s the collective heart rates of Billy Napier and Mike Norve

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