Year 10 of the James Franklin Era at Penn State begins in earnest in slightly under four weeks, and the August leading up to the season opener includes a quality those first nine Augusts were, to various extents, lacking: Optimism.
Think about it for a second. When was the last time Penn State entered a season with this much collective excitement/expectations from fans, media, and, if you squint a little bit, from the team itself?
During Franklin’s first two seasons, 2014 and 2015, the Nittany Lions were most greatly feeling the effects of the Sandusky sanctions. Forget expectations; the hope in those years was that Penn State wouldn’t fall on its face. The 2016 season that wound up as the coming out party for Saquon Barkley and ended in a legendary Rose Bowl shootout, if you remember, started as a summer in which people were willing to give first-year starting QB Trace McSorley and the new OC from Fordham some room to grow, and ugly early losses to Pitt and Michigan did not exactly foretell the fireworks to come.
