It is tempting, oh so very tempting, to dive into the abyss of the overtime portion of Saturday’s game, and just splash around in the muck and the mire of the botched Boalsburg Special or the runs to nowhere or Brandon Peters’ throw into the stands. There is agony and ecstasy — OK, mostly agony — to be found there, and maybe even some pseudo-inspiring schtick about Penn State defenders who logged roughly 100 snaps (not an exaggeration) in a game in which they were favored by 24 points.
But the longest overtime stretch in college football history is not the story of the day. No, that particular tale is the story of a would-be contender who was finally, painfully, exposed as a fully flawed pretender.
Penn State showed us who it really was in Saturday’s ugly 20-18 loss to a previously 2-5 Illinois team. For most of this season, the Nittany Lions had the markings of a talented team that could rev it up from time to time and was just a few plays or a few days away from putting it all together. The loss at Iowa was maddening and disappointing, to be sure, but could also easily be explained away — the gap from QB1 to QB2 on this particular team was substantial, and QB1 had been doing enough damage before his injury that you could make the case that the Lions could just as easily been 6-0 and sitting at No. 2 in the country as they came out of the bye week.
