James Franklin is off and running at Virginia Tech, putting together his staff while also being active on the revruiting trail. With the season winding down, announcements on who is joining his staff and/or being retained will likely start next week.
One early rumored potential offensive coordinator candidate for James Franklin has been Old Dominion head coach Ricky Rahne. Rahne worked under Franklin at Vanderbilt and at Penn State including as his offensive coordinator at PSU prior to taking the ODU head coaching job after the 2019 season.
There has been plenty of fan speculation about Rahne’s potential candidacy given the ties plus the massive raise that VT could offer Rahne to leave ODU and leave being a head coach. There was also Franklin’s recent trip to ODU’s game against Troy, though that almost certainly was Franklin watching a pair of his former assistants face off as head coaches in Rahne and Troy HC Gerad Parker.
Given some of the speculation, Rahne was asked about those rumors and had this response, denying that he’s had conversations with Franklin about the VT OC job.
"These rumors that Coach Franklin and I have talked about this job or whatever, that's not true. Coach Franklin has a job to do, I have a job to coach this team. I have every intention in the world about being the head coach of this team,” Rahne said.
Prior to Rahne being asked about the job, Franklin touched on his trip down to Norfolk to be in attendance at the game during his introductory press conference.
“Last week, I was at the Old Dominion game, I tailgated for the first time ever. [I] Ate a hot dog, drank a beer… but tailgated for my first time ever in my life. That time was good,” Franklin said.
Now the odds of Franklin talking to Rahne about being his OC at his next step is very low. However, it wouldn’t be shocking if Franklin has put out some feelers to Rahne along with other candidates to gauge their interest.
It's also a whole other question if Rahne would even take the job as offensive coordinator at Virginia Tech. It would be a jump to a Power 4 program, but Rahne has found success at Old Dominion as a head coach, and it would require him to sacrifice being a head coach after his best season in Norfolk to date.
On the other hand, with the news coming out that Virginia Tech will be allocating $9.5M for their primary 10 assistant coaches, Virginia Tech could easily give Rahne a big pay raise despite the demotion.
Virginia Tech would also be able to surpass Old Dominion in resources quite comfortably, as Rahne is almost bound to lose his star quarterback, Colton Joseph, to a school that would be ready to pay him a significant amount.
While the idea of a Franklin-Rahne reunion is definitely intriguing and can’t be fully ruled out, I don’t know if Rahne would be the one to take the demotion, despite the pay raise he would be given. There’s also the possibility that Rahne looks to make a lateral or slightly upward move for another head coaching job as someone who could be intriguing for one of the potential openings in the American or a more well-funded G5 like JMU should they lose Bob Chesney.
For now, Rahne is denying talk of him joining James Franklin’s staff. We’ll see if that remains true in the coming weeks or if it changes, neither of which would be a shock given how things can work in college football.
You can check out Tim Thomas’ look at several potential offensive coordinator candidates here.
