Mike Locksley brushes off bizarre media member rant about James Franklin
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Maryland Terrapins head football coach Mike Locksley met with the media on Tuesday, and Virginia Tech Hokies head coach James Franklin was a popular topic.
Locksley’s 2-0 Terrapins will host Franklin’s 2-0 Hokies next Saturday in Maryland, so it makes sense that reporters would probe about the upcoming opponent. But the real intrigue stemmed from what happened the last time Franklin and Locksley’s teams met.
In November 2024, Franklin, then the head coach at Penn State, shared an intense handshake with Locksley after Penn State ran up the score on Maryland in a 44-7 win. At the time, Locksley called it “bullsh*t,” while Franklin gave a lengthy explanation as to why he piled on Maryland.
On Tuesday, Locksley’s press conference opened with a question around that 2024 game, whether Locksley has “moved on,” and his relationship with Franklin now.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for James,” Locksley said. “He’s won everywhere he’s been, but this won’t be about James and Locks. This will be about the players that he has and the players I have that know a lot about each other. That’s a storyline I’m more into.”
Separately, Locksley acknowledged a decades-long personal history with Franklin, with whom he served on Ralph Friedgen’s Maryland coaching staff in the early 2000s. Franklin departed as Maryland’s offensive coordinator to become Vanderbilt’s head coach under contentious circumstances in 2010, while Locksley took over as head coach at Maryland in 2019, marking his third stint at the university.
“But like I said, the game here will have nothing to do with the personal,” Locksley said.
Again, expected questions and answers about an obvious storyline heading into this week’s game. But it officially took a turn into bizarre territory when one media member decided to deliver an impassioned rant in brazen disgust of Franklin.
Mike Locksley takes the high road when asked a question about the way James Franklin left Maryland and the disparaging comments he’s made about the university in the past.
Take a listen
— Inside Maryland Sports (@Terrapins247) September 15, 2026
“I do want to make a statement,” the off-camera, unnamed man said. “I know this is not Penn State, and it’s just Virginia Tech. We’re gonna play them twice in four years. But the egregious way that Franklin talked about Maryland after that game and talked about you — you’re our guy. And you might not believe it a hundred percent, but people love you here, myself included. It infuriated me to a point of no return.”
“You’re going to see that vociferousness in the crowd on Saturday,” he continued. “And I’m just curious, can that kind of power of a crowd help a team? I think you’re gonna see it, Coach, whether you care about it or not. You’re gonna see it! Because people really like you, and what he did was so wrong at that time. You’re gonna see it.”
A stone-faced Locksley stood and stared — one can only guess what was running through his mind — for the entire 67-second monologue. Once it came time to finally answer, he did not feed into the rage bait.
Read his entirely monotone response below:
“Yeah, I appreciate the statement. Obviously, those things, like I said, have happened, [but] will have no bearing on the game. And yeah, I would love — we gotta make ‘The Shell’ [SECU Stadium] a hard place to play, and not because of anything personal.
Because, as I said, this won’t be about James. This won’t about Locks. This will be about the players on the field. Guys like 53 and 16 and their quarterbacks and running backs. All of those things need to be taken care of on the field, and I’m for all of that energy, matching that energy on that field. Playing with discipline, protecting the football, doing a great job of creating explosives on offense and not having them on defense. And if we can do those things, we’ll have what we want at the end of the game on Saturday.”
The unfortunate part in all of this is that the actual question — “can that kind of power of a crowd help a team?” — was fine. But the fan-boy tenor of his over-the-top, possessive support of Locksley and Maryland, grating against all journalistic practices (if anybody even cares anymore), drowned out a legitimate question.
The post Mike Locksley brushes off bizarre media member rant about James Franklin appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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