Inside James Franklin's rapid recruiting overhaul at Virginia Tech - ESPN

JAMES FRANKLIN DIDN'T have any answers. Instead, minutes before Virginia Tech's Nov. 22 home game against Miami, he was asking for a considerable leap of faith. Roughly a dozen of them, actually.

It had been just 38 days since Penn State made the decision to fire Franklin six games into his 12th season with the program. Now, sporting a maroon hoodie inside the Hokies' team room, he was pitching a collection of high school prospects on why they should join him in Blacksburg. Among the group: quarterback Troy Huhn, running back Messiah Mickens and six other recruits who a month earlier had made up the core of a promising Nittany Lions recruiting class.

The clock, less than two weeks from the 2026 early signing period, was ticking. But Franklin, only 72 hours after his formal introduction as Virginia Tech's new head football coach, was still assembling his coaching staff and learning to navigate his new campus. He also couldn't say precisely how the program would attack the impending transfer portal window.

«They're asking me who the coordinators are going to be? And I just said, you have to trust me,» he told ESPN. "'Who is my position coach going to be?' And I just said, you have to trust me."

Franklin and the Hokies picked up 17 pledges over the next 12 days, including commitments from 11 ex-Penn State recruits led by Huhn, Mickens and fellow ESPN 300 prospects Davion Brown and Pierce Petersohn. Unranked upon Franklin's Nov. 17 hiring, Virginia Tech's incoming class enters Wednesday's national signing day 21st in ESPN's national class rankings, catapulted by the hottest finish to the 2026 cycle of any program across college football.

Virginia Tech's gain came at significant expense to Penn State, which saw its initial