James Franklin felt that he had earned some "grace" after more than 11 years as the Penn State football coach, a tenure which abruptly ended 20 minutes before a Sunday team meeting last October. Speaking with former Penn State football player Adam Breneman, Franklin said that felt "blindsided" by Penn State's decision to fire him after the Nittany Lions had lost three straight Big Ten games, the last at home to Northwestern. "When you give yourself to a place for 12 years and you turn down a bunch of jobs and you build it back to pretty much a consistent top-10 program competing for championships, that's where you felt blindsided and you felt like you'd earned at least that, right? A conversation," Franklin told Breneman in an interview. "But again, I'm appreciative of my time, and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to turn into this bitter old ball coach, right? Again, very, very appreciative. Love those families, love those kids, love the staff that I got to work with.…