When college football teams head into tough road matchups, they often practice with artificial crowd noise or loud music to simulate the environment they’ll be playing it. But as the Penn State Nittany Lions prepare to take on the Northwestern Wildcats, they’ll be simulating the environment by practicing in silence.
In an unintentional roast of the Northwestern fanbase, James Franklin said he was “just being very honest” about what the atmosphere is like, but also pointed out that Northwestern is very good at playing in it.
“I think just being honest, just being very honest about what it’s going to be like,” James Franklin said. “These guys are 2-0 at home. You look at Northwestern. They’ve typically had a good home record. Why? Because it can be challenging to play there. They’re used to the environment. Other people may not be. It’s going to be very different than what we played in last week.”
Franklin wants to simulate the much more subdued environment to remind his team that they won’t be able to rely on a loud and energetic atmosphere to get them ready to play the game.
“So, just being transparent and honest. Are we internally motivated or are we externally motivated? But for me to act like it’s not a factor, it is. You’ve got to get prepared for it. You haven’t had any music, even our period 20 you guys know we usually play Phil Collins and it’s usually blaring, and they were asking me to turn it up today and I said, ‘No,’” Franklin said.
“So, just little things like that, but at the end of the day it’s going to be about us executing our jobs and our assignments, and playing the game for each other and playing the game for our love for the game of football and our teammates, and playing up to our standard, no matter the circumstances.”
It’s certainly an interesting approach, but it’s also an unintentional roast of the Northwestern fans.
