ELM CITY, N.C. -- The day is hot, but not humid, tobacco and soybean fields stretching for miles all around. Toward the Tar River, just past Albert Road, there is an unmarked turnoff that leads to a big shade tree and a small family cemetery. The tombstone belonging to the road's namesake, Albert Battle, sits to the right. His wife, Hixie, sits to the left.
Born 200 years ago into slavery, they worked the land where they now rest. Not much is known about their parents, nor how they won their freedom. As the family story goes, Albert was freed at a young age and eventually got an opportunity to buy some of the land he worked when he was enslaved. One of a handful of Black landowners at that time, Battle decreed in his will in 1901 that the land be divided up and passed down to his children and their heirs.
Four hours to the north and west, his great-great-great grandson embarks on a new chapter in his life, as the new head coach at Virginia Tech. James Franklin has the history memorized. A booklet his aunt put together tracing their genealogy sits in a box in his new Blacksburg home, still packed after the move from Penn State.
He first visited the cemetery as a 12-year-old during a family reunion, and still has a photo from that trip -- standing with his aunts, sister, mom, dad and cousins in front of an old white clapboard house where his relatives used to live.
"That had a huge impact on me," he says now. "When you talk about the first free slaves in your family, that is a significant story and a fascinating story to understand all that had to be overcome."
Now, Franklin is living the American Dream, as one of the most visible college football coaches in the country, and his most recent job has taken him closer to his roots. Virginia Tech is convinced that Franklin is the one to restore its winning tradition and get the Hokies into the College Football Playoff conversation. He's got a tall task ahead of him. Virginia Tech is 16 years removed from its last ACC championship.
We may not get any definitive answer about whether or not Franklin can revitalize the program when the season kicks off Saturday against VMI. But the game is meaningful for Franklin for more than one reason. The three women he lovingly refers to as his aunts will be there. LaWanda Peace, who lives on the family land the Battles left behind just outside Rocky Mount, North Carolina, will drive with her sister, Romaine Peace, and their cousin, Melbadene Battle. Other family members will attend, too, including his sister, Debra, uncles and cousins, 13 total expected.
"I have a really small family, and the family that I do have is aging. The window is closing," Franklin said. "I would have loved for my mom and my dad to have seen me become a head coach. They never got to experience that. To be able to share that with my aunts and get them to this first game, it's important to me."
It is just as important to them.
AT THIS TIME last year, Franklin was firmly entrenched as the head coach at Penn State, with a team built to compete for a national title. Nothing about his career trajectory indicated he was in danger of getting fired.
At Vanderbilt, he won nine games twice in three seasons before taking the Penn State job in 2014 while the program was under severe NCAA sanctions. In 2016, Franklin led the Nittany Lions to a Big Ten championship. During his tenure at the school, he would win 10 or more games six times -- including in 2024, when the Nittany Lions came closer than they had in decades to playing for a national championship, losing in the CFP semifinals to Notre Dame by three points.
But that loss only reinforced a narrative that had taken hold -- that Franklin simply could not win the big game. Many discussions about him centered squarely on his poor career record against top-10 teams. Franklin often scoffed at questions to this effect, instead pointing out how far the program had come while in his care.
Both points can be true. But to a Penn State fan base eager to see progress and 10-win seasons turned into championships, patience was wearing thin. Franklin had a chance to shift the narrative in Week 4 against No. 6 Oregon. Instead, Penn State lost 30-24 in double overtime, dropping his record against top-10 teams to 4-21. Outrage from the fan base only grew after back-to-back losses to unranked UCLA -- playing for an interim coach, no less -- and Northwestern.
Franklin was fired following the 3-3 start.
"That was a very painful period of time," he said.
He wondered whether he had changed his approach too much after the 2024 season, giving up too much control over game planning and day-to-day operations. He wondered if he never should have said, aloud, that he thought his team would contend for the national title. His daughters, still close with the players who remained, would turn on the Penn State game every weekend last season, screaming loud enough for Franklin to hear in the next room. But he could not bring himself to watch.
Instead, he started to watch Virginia Tech. His good friend and former assistant, Brent Pry, had been fired weeks earlier, so the job was open. The Virginia Tech search committee reached out to Franklin shortly after he was fired at Penn State. What made the job more appealing was the school's long-awaited investment in football -- after allowing it to languish for more than a decade -- with a four-year, $229 million athletic-department-wide "Invest to Win" plan.
They seemed like a perfect fit: Virginia Tech needed a proven winner to bring it back to national relevance; Franklin needed an opportunity to show what happened last year at Penn State would not define him.
It was only after he took the job last November that it hit him: His aunts -- and familial roots -- would now be only a drive away.
LAWANDA PEACE SITS in her screened-in patio with her cousin, Melbadene Battle, on the same land where they grew up and picked cotton, corn and tobacco as kids. Only a few family members remain in this part of the family tree, connected through Franklin's father, James Sr., who grew up in Pittsburgh.
When LaWanda Peace left to go to Howard University in Washington, D.C., she vowed one day to come back and live here, on the land left to her. The family historian, Peace spent decades tracing their genealogy. She knew it was up to her to keep the family legacy alive.
The house they grew up in, with no indoor plumbing, is long gone. Peace built a new home when she moved back in 2015 after a long career working as a dean at Howard. It was during her time at Howard that she, her sister Romaine and Battle grew close with Franklin, his mom, Jocelyn, and his sister.
Jocelyn, a white woman from Manchester, England, met and married James Sr. when he was stationed overseas in the Air Force. Franklin says his dad, James Sr., struggled with alcoholism and would leave his family for long stretches, before leaving for good when Franklin was in high school.
His mom had no family of her own nearby, and moving back to England never entered her mind. As a single mom raising two kids, she stuck with the only family she knew. It hardly mattered that they were related to her ex-husband. Family bonds are bonds. Blood or not.
"She was like a sister to me," Battle said. "We used to do so much stuff together. We used to go to all of James' football games, high school and college. James just loved football. He wanted to play professionally."
The three aunts lived in Maryland; Franklin and his family lived near Philadelphia. They would see each other for holidays and during the summer. Both aunts reminisced about what they remember about the boy they called "Little James" since he shared the same name as his father.
Battle remembers a treehouse he loved to climb and hide in, and a motor bike he used to ride with reckless abandon.
"I was the cool aunt," LaWanda says with a laugh. "I didn't have any kids, so I would let them do whatever they wanted. Stay up late. If you wanted ice cream at 12 o'clock at night, then you ate ice cream. I'd put them on my lap, and they would steer the car and stuff. James was always scared."
Franklin lived to make his mother proud, but he also credits his aunts for helping shape him. Neither of his parents went to college, but all three of his aunts did, and had good jobs as educators. That alone showed him what was possible. Later, as he got his start in coaching, he moved in with Peace after he got a job as an assistant at Maryland in 2000. She helped him buy his first house.
He lost his parents relatively young -- his dad died while he was coaching at James Madison in 1997 and his mom while he was coaching at Kansas State in 2007. His aunts remain his connection to his family, his own children included. His daughter, Shola, goes to culinary school in Charlotte and recently went to Raleigh to visit Battle.
"They were my role models, and those were the women that helped raised me," Franklin said. "So, all my values and my morals and my beliefs come from them. They did a phenomenal job."
Though Franklin often calls or texts to check in with them, they have not seen each other since his extended family attended a Penn State game in 2022, the distance between them and his work schedule the greatest obstacles. His aunts are thrilled to have him so close -- Peace says she plans to get to as many games as she can now that she is just a drive away.
"We're excited," Peace said. "It was a loss for Penn State, but now that he's here, he's going to do well."
The question, of course, is: what is well?
FIVE MONTHS AFTER Franklin was hired, Virginia Tech athletic director Whit Babcock stepped down. Franklin took an active role in the search for a new AD, wanting to find one who would "wake up every single morning trying to build championships." He believes Virginia Tech has that person in Brian White, hired from Florida Atlantic.
The two spent hours on the phone during the vetting process. Franklin called other coaches who had previously worked for White to get their take.
"I don't know that a lot of coaches would have that level of care and concern over who they're going to partner with," White told ESPN. "That's the word we kept talking about was a partnership, and that to me was exciting -- that he values having a partner that's going to get in the trenches with him on what we can do to help Virginia Tech."
Virginia Tech has needed help for more than a decade. Legendary coach Frank Beamer brought the Hokies to new heights during his tenure, winning 228 games over 29 years with four ACC titles and a national championship game appearance in 2000. But the program slipped over his final few years, and outside one 10-win season under Justin Fuente in 2016, Virginia Tech has been nationally irrelevant. The last time the Hokies appeared in the AP Top 25 was in 2021.
It is no secret that the Hokies did not fund football the way its competitors did over the last decade. They're clearly determined not to fall further behind. Virginia Tech gave Franklin a five-year, $41.75 million contract, paying him $8.2 million annually -- about double what Pry made as head coach.
When Franklin arrived, he saw exactly why Virginia Tech devised its "Invest to Win" strategy. Typically, when a new head coach takes over, he puts his own core values or slogans throughout the facility. The Hokies still had messaging on their walls from Justin Fuente, fired in 2021. No longer.
"Since he's landed on campus, the building's been under construction," safety Tyson Flowers said. "He's completely redone our athletic training room. The whole downstairs football hallway is being remodeled. The team meeting room has been remodeled. Areas of the locker room are being remodeled.
"It feels like there's more resources. I feel like every area in the nutrition center, in the cafeteria, in the training room and the equipment room, it's more proactive in getting us what we need. It's not something we have to seek out."
The excitement around campus, and the donor base, has been noticeable. Since Franklin was hired, Virginia Tech has announced one $20 million donation and a record $75 million donation -- the majority going to athletics. An estimated 40,000 people came to the spring game -- more than double the attendance from the previous year. The opener against VMI is sold out.
While Franklin is grateful for the improved investment, he told ESPN in July there is another level Virginia Tech must reach to compete for national championships. He reiterated those comments last week to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
"The reality is that all the things that we've done are committed to being competitive in the ACC. There's a huge difference between committed to being competitive and trying to win a national championship," Franklin told ESPN. "I've been a part of it. Because as much as we've taken a significant step, there's still a whole other step."
Franklin did not say how much more he believes Virginia Tech needs to spend to contend for a national title, and White demurred when asked how far the program is from Franklin's spending goals.
"When you look at brands, the passion of the fan base is what you want, and your ambition should match the passion," White said. "Our goal is to win a national championship, and we've just got to figure out the plan in a way to make resources commensurate with expectations. That's what we're working on now."
Winning right away helps to sell that vision and rewards the optimism that comes with the start of the Franklin era. Franklin also feels renewed optimism after the way things ended at Penn State, but he also knows there is little time to waste. "We've got to find a way to figure it out and figure it out fast," he said.
If he feels any extra motivation to prove the people at Penn State wrong, he is not saying publicly. "I have always had a chip on my shoulder," Franklin said.
His aunts, of course, saw that firsthand. They saw him grow from an undersized, under-recruited quarterback at Division II East Stroudsburg in the early 1990s, to living out his dream as a head coach. Peace feels a special obligation to keep the dream Albert Battle had 125 years ago alive, and ensure the land he left to his family stays in the family. But with no heirs of her own, Peace is unsure who will want to be the next caretaker of the Battle family legacy.
"She's done an unbelievable job through the hard work and sweat equity that she's put into taking care of the property," Franklin said. "But not only that, financially, she's made this commitment for a long period of time. Those are some conversations that are going to need to happen, so it's peace of mind for her, but also what's in the best interest of the family property and the family history."
For now, though, the conversations will turn to football as Franklin readies for his next chapter: Penn State in the distance, his vision for Virginia Tech firmly in view.
