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Participants sought for fall prevention program research study

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Their view: These midterms really do matter more

<p>The question was about Denny Douds. And for James Franklin, the words came easily &#8212; in this setting.</p><p>At his weekly press conference on Tuesday, the Penn State coach spoke at length about the impact he felt from his own college coach, Douds, who announced over the weekend that he was stepping down after 45 years leading East Stroudsburg.</p><p>But nothing has made it easier to deliver the words to Douds personally.</p><p>&#8221;I haven&#8217;t reached out to Denny yet because I&#8217;m trying to figure out what I&#8217;m going to say to him,&#8221; Franklin said. &#8220;Kind of been struggling with that, to be honest with you. I&#8217;ll give him a call. Try to give him some time as well, because (when) you&#8217;ve been in the same place for as many years as he&#8217;s been there and all the lives that he&#8217;s touched, when you walk away it&#8217;s hard. I think we have all seen that. We&#8217;ve seen that here at Penn State. We&#8217;ve seen that nationally. It&#8217;s hard at the end.</p><p>&#8220;So I&#8217;m going to reach out to Denny and hopefully get some time with him to talk and make sure he knows how much I appreciate him professionally, but more importantly personally. &#8230; I guess where I&#8217;m struggling is how do I put all this into words for Denny? How do I explain that during a game week on a phone call when I would rather do it in person?&#8221;</p><p>Douds, who had been with the Warriors program for 53 years in total, called timeout with four seconds left in Saturday&#8217;s game in East Stroudsburg to let his players know he was retiring.</p><p>The officiating crew gave him the latitude to take as much time as he needed and then the 77-year-old walked off the field for the final time, tipping his cap, as the last seconds ticked off the clock.</p><p>At that point, he was the NCAA active leader in career wins (264) and games coached (471) at any level of football. He also owns the PSAC record for wins and ranks 16th all-time in NCAA history in career wins, and seventh in games coached.</p><p>And he played a sizable role in the lives of countless players, including Franklin, who was Douds&#8217; starting quarterback in 1993 and 1994.</p><p>&#8220;Huge impact,&#8221; Franklin said. &#8220;Denny really served a lot of roles for me. Denny was obviously my head coach in college. Denny was a father figure in a lot of ways for me. For me for a good portion of my life I didn&#8217;t really have that role in my life, so Denny kind of filled a lot of those gaps for me.</p><p>&#8220;Then after I got done playing and thought I wanted to coach, I lived with Denny and his wife, Judy, for a period of time until I found a place to stay. So I remember coming in nights after practice and after meetings and we would sit on the back porch. And Denny is a huge ice cream guy, so we would eat Klondike bars on the back porch and talk stories. And I would ask him a thousand questions as a young ball coach trying to figure some things out, where I wanted to go with all this.&#8221;</p><p>More than 20 years later, Franklin is leading the biggest program in the state, getting ready to take the Nittany Lions into Michigan for a top-15 matchup on Saturday.</p><p>Regardless of how long Franklin remains in the profession, he aims to have an influence beyond football.</p><p>&#8221;Obviously the wins are important in this business. We all get it,&#8221; Franklin said. &#8220;But I also hope that I have the opportunity to have the type of personal impact that Denny had on people and had on that community and all those types of things.&#8221;</p><p><strong>Infirmary report</strong></p><p>Sunday was most likely a painful day for Trace McSorley, who took a shot to his right knee on a sack, missed a handful of plays and then returned to finish out a win over Iowa.</p><p>McSorley donned a brace for the knee throughout the second half and could be seen grimacing on runs, including his 51-yard touchdown dash that gave the Lions the lead in the third quarter.</p><p>While McSorley&#8217;s availability for Saturday&#8217;s game in Ann Arbor doesn&#8217;t appear to be in question, it&#8217;s much less clear how much the injury will affect him going forward.</p><p>&#8220;As you know, I&#8217;m not going to talk about how it&#8217;s going to impact him on Saturday,&#8221; Franklin said.</p><p>Penn State will also be monitoring the recovery of wideout Juwan Johnson from a lower-body injury he suffered two weeks ago at Indiana.</p><p>Johnson suited up last weekend against Iowa and appeared on a few drives but did not record a catch. Franklin said Johnson was &#8220;not feeling 100 percent&#8221; and was replaced in the lineup by DeAndre Thompkins, who made his first start since the opener and made a handful of important catches.</p><p>&#8220;I approached it just like I approach every other game,&#8221; Thompkins said. &#8220;I was well-prepared for it. Just the ball seemed to find me a little bit more this game than others, and I&#8217;m not complaining about that. I just tried to make the best of my abilities. I got more opportunities this game than other games, and hopefully we can continue to improve upon that.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Penn State&#8217;s James Franklin said he owes a lot to his own college coach, Denny Douds, who recently announced he was stepping down at East Stroudsburg. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/web1_franklin-douds.jpg</photo0><caption0>Penn State&#8217;s James Franklin said he owes a lot to his own college coach, Denny Douds, who recently announced he was stepping down at East Stroudsburg. </caption0><photoCredit0>Twitter.com </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Derek Levarse</p><p>dlevarse@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div>

Lions’ Franklin discusses legacy of his coach at East Stroudsburg, Denny Douds