Megan Franklin excited for homecoming at Nebraska

Some kids opt for popular monikers, like Luna, Callie or Bella. Others choose names from their favorite movies or television shows. Sometimes silly names stick.

But for Megan Armbruster Franklin, there’s a clear inspiration behind the names of her three childhood cats.

Irving Fryar. Mike Rozier. Turner Gill. Not just Irving. Not just Mike. Not just Turner. The full names of the three famed Nebraska football seniors on the 1983 “scoring explosion” team.

“We loved Nebraska,” Franklin reflected. “We were little and we named our cats after those guys.”

It’s been decades since then, but her fandom of Nebraska has never wavered. Franklin grew up in Cozad and went to high school in Lincoln. She’s a two-time Nebraska alumna, earning her Bachelor of Science in Education in 1998 and her Master of Arts in Educational Administration in 2001.

While in school, she spent years as a student athletic trainer for both Tom Osborne- and Frank Solich-coached teams. She worked for two years under Keith Zimmer and Dennis LeBlanc as an assistant academic counselor for Nebraska Athletics.

She’s a proud Cornhusker. She tries to return to her alma mater once a season to watch a game in Memorial Stadium — last doing so for the lightning-delayed matchup last year against Louisiana Tech.

Franklin’s Lincoln homecoming this year comes Saturday against Northern Iowa.

There’s just one tiny difference this time.

She’ll proudly be wearing purple on Saturday instead of her life-long scarlet, considering she’s Northern Iowa’s newest athletic director.

Franklin’s held the job since May, replacing current Tulane athletic director David Harris. Harris left UNI to replace current Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen after he left Tulane for Washington. (In another full-circle moment, Harris also replaced Dannen in 2016 when Dannen left Northern Iowa for Tulane in 2015.)

“It’s a little bit like planning a wedding,” Franklin quipped of Saturday’s game. “Not quite, but close. It’s one of those dates on the calendar that’s been circled since I learned about it. But to have the opportunity in my first year as a director of athletics to be back at my two-time alma mater and where I started my athletics career is really special.

“I look back at Nebraska as where I really honed my skills and my foundation and values and leadership. So to be able to be back and honor and thank the colleagues who are still there, it’s really special.”

There are plenty of Franklin’s former colleagues still at Nebraska.

The three head coaches she worked the closest with while working in Hewitt are still here — volleyball’s John Cook, soccer’s John Walker and softball’s Rhonda Revelle. Even though it’s been more than two decades since Franklin left, she’s still in contact with them.

It’s not just them. She’s looking forward to seeing LeBlanc and Zimmer, too.

“I call Keith pretty often, relatively speaking, to ask him for advice or to give insight into what’s happening in the industry,” Franklin said. “He has done so much (for me) that I really hope he feels pride because I’m on his coaching tree. I really do feel grateful to him.”

Inversely, Zimmer is grateful to her, too.

“Sometimes it’s the simple skills, and I think she has those,” Zimmer said. “She’s a model of consistency, discipline and professionalism. All those things will carry an administrator a long way and I’m glad people recognized it in her.

“It’ll probably be a really emotional weekend for her but a happy and exciting weekend for her to come home to Lincoln. I know she’ll be decked out in purple and gold, but I know she will always bleed red.”

While Franklin is at Northern Iowa now, the lessons she learned while in the Cornhusker State propelled her to where she is now.

That’s Franklin’s foundational mantra. It’s her North Star. It’s her biggest priority.

It’s a lesson she learned at Lincoln Southeast under Hall of Fame athletic trainer Julie Buck. It’s a lesson she learned at Nebraska working alongside Osborne and Solich as an athletic trainer. It’s a lesson she learned at Nebraska working as an academic counselor working with Cook, Walker and Revelle.

“What I do in my work today is I support coaches being their best selves and lead with love. And that’s what I saw at Nebraska,” Franklin said. “I saw coaches leading with love across the board, and they were winning championships in doing so.”

What that means to her is simple.

When you help develop student-athletes, coaches and staff, into the best versions of themselves, that translates into productivity, success and the ability to achieve greatness — either for themselves or for those around them.

“You just think, ‘Gosh, I’d like to be able to make an impact like that, where you can really serve a greater good,’” Franklin said of former Nebraska athletics staffers like Barbara Hibner and Pat Logsdon. “That’s my favorite thing about athletics.

“ … Community is built in a way around athletics. And for me, I really watched that when I grew up at Nebraska. What happens in Memorial Stadium is much greater than a game.”

What happens in Memorial Stadium is much greater than a game.

That’s true most days, but that will especially be true on Saturday for Franklin.

It’s a homecoming. It’s a reunion. It’s an old chapter. It’s a new chapter. It’s a representation of a life coming full circle.

“It’s really going to be awesome,” Franklin said. “It will be special in so many ways.”