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James Franklin insists Virginia Tech will not explore transfer portal until officially open: 'I've followed the rules my whole career'

IMG_6598by: Nick Kosko12/31/25nickkosko59

James Franklin insisted that Virginia Tech would not explore the transfer portal until it was officially open. Well, it’s about to!

Franklin is going into his first year as Virginia Tech’s head coach and claimed he always followed the rules when it comes to the transfer portal and recruiting. The new Hokies leader admitted you have to have an idea of the portal, though, pretty much all the time.

“Yeah, I think you got to have a good idea about that, right?” Franklin said on the ACC Network broadcast of Virginia Tech-Virginia basketball. “But the reality is, you know, are you going to follow the rules? Right? I’ve followed the rules my whole career. They changed the rules as well, where you can’t do a lot of that recruiting while you’re out of work like you used to be able to do a couple years ago. So you have an idea, but you really can’t do anything legally until that pool is open.”

This isn’t the first time Franklin addressed his contact with recruits prior to taking the job. He was fired at Penn State after six games this season and hired at the end of the regular season.

During an appearance on Rivals’ College Football National Signing Day show on YouTube, Franklin opened up about what went into building out Virginia Tech’s hastily-put-together 2026 signing class. That included how much contact he had with recruits during his month-long hiatus.

“Not a whole lot. To be honest with you, when everything went down, I needed to take a little bit of time and take a deep breath, it was kind of shocking and caught me and my family off guard. So we were kind of working through that,” Franklin said Wednesday. “And then people started reaching out, (Penn State) recruits that obviously had not signed yet and were interested in going where I was going to go. And I went on ESPN (College GameDay) and that kind of got some things going as well, and people were excited and wanted to come with us.

“So all these things factored into it, but ultimately, I wanted to make sure that they were in the best position to take care of them and their families and their futures, so I didn’t know if it would time up. But it ended up working out.”