Alabama played Florida for the SEC championship on Saturday night. Earlier, Ohio State battled Northwestern for the Big Ten crown and Clemson faced Notre Dame for the ACC title.
Penn State also played Saturday, but the Nittany Lions’ “Champions Week” matchup against a severely undermanned Illinois team was ironic, to say the least.
In one sense, the afternoon was a reminder of what went wrong for the Nittany Lions in this whirlwind season – a team that had entered 2020 with a lot of stars and a lot of promise finishing its season against another five-loss team in a game that, unlike the other three mentioned above, had no playoff implications but had the (checks notes) Duke’s Mayo Bowl Twitter account humming.
In another sense, it was a great opportunity to assess just how far away Penn State might be from playing on this particular Saturday, in a meaningful way, a year from now.
