James Franklin is a busy man.

Last Saturday, Franklin led his Penn State football team out of the Beaver Stadium south tunnel to beat Maryland 44-7. On Wednesday, he signed 26 high school seniors to play college football for him next year. This Saturday, Franklin and the Nittany Lions will march onto the field of Lucas Oil Stadium to play Oregon for the Big Ten Championship. The following Monday, Franklin will likely work the phones to convince a handful of players in the transfer portal to come to Penn State.

Busier than an engineering major during finals week, Franklin took some time from his Wednesday press conference to share his opinion on a compact December schedule in college football and the impact it’s having on the sport.

For now, Franklin is trying to handle one thing at a time. Wednesday morning, that was signing those 26 players. On Wednesday evening, Franklin said he only cared about beating the Ducks. The transfer portal stuff would come later.

“Transfer portal is about to open. I get it. Again, we’re just trying to keep everybody focused on the task of playing,” Franklin said.

Franklin can try as hard as he can to focus on one thing at once, but the December schedule makes that nearly impossible. Even when he’s done with Oregon, win or lose, the transfer portal will open Monday. The day before that, Penn State and the rest of the nation will get their first look at the College Football Playoff bracket. While his recruiting team is trying to grab players from the portal, Franklin and his coaching staff will be doing game prep.

The overlap is inevitable.

“I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense to have one of the most important days of the year, signing day, [now], which is very complex, and today’s college football is more complex than it’s ever been,” Franklin said.

“Oh, and by the way, you’re about playing the No. 1 team in the country. Don’t know if that makes a whole lot of sense. There’s been a lot of discussion for a long time that instead of continuing to piecemeal and make changes to solve certain problems, we need to look at the whole thing holistically, the entire model, the rules, the calendar, all of it, but it is what it is.”