James Franklin, come on down: You're the next 'done deal' in Vandy's coaching search

Regular readers should know by now to take any and all news coming out of the Vanderbilt coaching search with a grain of salt, after the false start on Sunday night that had Auburn offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn on his way to Nashville. Let's try it again, this time with the Commodores' second choice, Maryland offensive coordinator James Franklin, who reportedly has or very shortly will accept Vandy's offer to succeed the short-lived Robbie Caldwell as head coach, per both ESPN and the Washington Post.

Franklin has interviewed at least twice for the Vandy gig, but the university was still telling the local Tennessean "not yet" on reports of his hire this afternoon. If Franklin falls through, as well, it's strike two for the WaPo, which will officially be off the list of reputable sources where SEC coaching jobs are concerned.

Franklin's offenses haven't exactly set the ACC on fire – the Terps have averaged a little over 21 points in 24 ACC games since Franklin returned to College Park as OC in 2008 – which you could explain away by pointing to the Terps' mediocre talent level, if Vanderbilt's talent level relative to the rest of the SEC wasn't so much larger. The Commodores were dead last in the conference against this year in total and scoring offense, and haven't averaged more than 20 points per game since 2007 – when they averaged a little over 21 per game, still good for 10th in the league. They've had exactly one viable, SEC-caliber quarterback in 25 years (Jay Cutler from 2002-05), and he couldn't get them to .500. It's impossible to guess how Franklin, in his first head coaching job on any level, is going to fare much better.

Whatever he accomplishes in Nashville, Franklin's departure would likely also mark the effective death of the open-ended "coach-in-waiting" arrangement, Dana Holgorsen pending arrival at West Virginia notwithstanding. Maryland named Franklin the official heir apparent to Ralph Friedgen in early 2009, in an apparent to keep him from jumping to the NFL. When it looked like the Fridge might be on his way out on the heels of a 2-10 disaster in 2009, he wrangled another season; when the Terps turned things around to finish 8-4 this year, he wrangled another season. Franklin was set to make $1 million if he wasn't sitting in Friedgen's chair by Jan. 1, 2012, but at some point – as with Will Muschamp at Texas – the juice is no longer worth the squeeze when other attractive offers come are out there.

The premeditated transitions that have come off the most successfully (at Purdue, Oregon and Kentucky) have come in the situations that either established a clear timeline for handing off the reins or a very short waiting period. When the "apprenticeship" stretches into multiple seasons (see Muschamp, Franklin and Bobby Bowden's rocky exit to make room for Jimbo Fisher at Florida State), it starts to get dicey.

In any case, as opportunities go, Vanderbilt is not Florida. But it's not a pressure cooker that demands instant success, either – or even long-term success, as Bobby Johnson proved, as long as there's progress and the stirrings of a breakthrough every few years or so. If Franklin can build something resembling a consistent competitor, the job can be is for a long time, and doors may open to a few others in short order – you know, if he actually

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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