Penn State and Pittsburgh will finally resume their series on the football field in 2016 with the start of a four-game series between the instate rivals. The build-up to that renewal of the series should continue to build in recruiting battles between the coaches at both schools, but James Franklin has asked one of his assistants to cool off a little bit on Twitter.
During a live interview with ESPN on “College Football Live” Tuesday afternoon Franklin said he asked offensive line coach Herb Hand to step back from some indirect Twitter exchanges with his counterpart at Pittsburgh, John Peterson. The two offensive line coaches had exchanged in some amusing exchanges over the last week as both coaches are looking to make an impact and plant a flag in the state of Pennsylvania.
If you missed that fun, it started when Peterson shared this image on Twitter…
#H2P pic.twitter.com/OHRuE3oJdY
— john peterson (@coachjpete) January 22, 2015
… and Hand responded on his own account…
Win bowl game✔️ Better record vs common opponents✔️ More seats full on game days✔️ Higher academic ranking (US News&W/R)✔️ (#PssstOurState) — Herb Hand (@CoachHand) January 22, 2015
It escalated a little from there with a few more tweets from each offensive line coach. Fans of both schools enjoyed the exchanges, and why not? It was done in good fun, or so it seemed. Either way, perhaps it is best to bring things under some control before things turn ugly.
On a related note, Franklin also suggested he was disappointed he did not have 107,000 followers on Twitter yet. He’;s roughly 10,000 shy of that mark as I write this, so he should eb able to get that number by the start of the new season.
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