I’ll get this out of the way because while it is a gift that keeps on giving, there’s no time for it. Just something to file away until next September. James Franklin, the coach of Penn State, is now revising his comments on Pitt’s defense clapping. First, while admitting it messed up his team’s attempted clap cadence in the first quarter, he conceded it was legal. Now, he’s claiming otherwise.
Pitt’s defense is perfectly allowed to use clapping to signal their own defensive plays. The dispute — shockingly enough — poorly articulated by Franklin, is that Pitt was doing it to disrupt Penn St. The PSU QB Trace McSorley actually gives the reason why PSU is jumping on this excuse.
And while Narduzzi had said after the game Saturday that his defense used the clapping to signal each other in Week 1 against Villanova, McSorley wasn’t too sure about that.
“I hadn’t seen them clapping on the film the prior week,” McSorley said. “But I mean, if that’s what Coach Narduzzi said, I don’t know what they were talking about on their side. So I guess that is what it is.”
The counter-point is that PSU didn’t use much in the way of clapping as signals to each other at home against Kent St. the previous week. Citing previous week’s game tape isn’t conclusive of much.
At the end of the day, those were Big Ten refs on the field and they didn’t have a problem with it, so Franklin can go with “just another excuse.”
