At 5:40 a.m. two days after Ohio State’s win in the national championship, James Franklin received a phone call.

Knee-deep in vetting candidates for the defensive coordinator job left open by Tom Allen’s abrupt departure for Clemson, Franklin realized he had a shot at hiring Jim Knowles.

Until the phone call, hiring Knowles was only an idea. After, Franklin began to get excited.

“That’s when I thought it might be real and that maybe I had a chance,” Franklin said at a press conference on Tuesday. “We looked at NFL guys, we looked at college guys, and we kept narrowing the list down. We hadn’t made any offers, and then this became a possibility.”

While Franklin characterized a coaching search as a “painstaking process,” he was prepared. Along with director of football research and strategy Will Reimann, Franklin is constantly keeping an eye on the job market and adding names to shortlists of staff replacements.

After the call, though, he was all in on Knowles. So were multiple other schools.

Knowles ran the top-ranked unit in both total defense and scoring defense last year as the defensive coordinator of the national champions. A bidding war was sure to ensue, and a deal had to be reached fast.

“What I think helped with this is we spoke a couple of years back when the position was open, so we already had some familiarity with each other,” Franklin said. “We were able to start conversations after the national championship and it went quickly.”

Once a deal was nearly finalized, the story broke on January 26. However, Knowles hadn’t yet signed the contract. On the finish line of a massive hiring, Franklin worried the news could hurt the finalization of the deal. On top of the news being reported, Knowles was taking heat for not being at the Ohio State championship celebration.

Despite the complications, the deal was finalized. The three-year deal is reportedly worth $3.1 million per year, making Knowles the highest-paid defensive coordinator in college football.

While Knowles said in his introductory press conference last Tuesday that he didn’t have much contact with Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Pat Kraft during the hiring process, Franklin said the deal couldn’t have been done without the support of Kraft and President Neeli Bendapudi.

“In the last two years, the commitment level has matched the expectations, and I think there are very few places in the country that can actually say that, so I’m very appreciative of that,” Franklin said. “Pat Kraft has been phenomenal and supportive, and Neeli Bendapudi has been unbelievably supportive. It takes support to get these things done.”

Now that he’s on campus, Knowles and the defensive staff have been busy implementing the new system. This isn’t Franklin’s first rodeo, though, after replacing three coordinators in the leadup to the 2024 season. Similar to the hiring process in general, Franklin called everything that happens in the immediate aftermath of the hiring a tough task.

Regardless, Franklin feels the excitement around the hiring and is looking forward to working with the new leader of the defense.

“Coach Knowles and the defensive staff have a ton of work to do,” Franklin said. “It’s a painstaking process, but it’s really, really valuable.”