Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

This was, to put it mildly, an emotional year for Penn State football fans.

I won’t pretend that I can list all of those emotions nor the depths of them here, but for most of you, it probably went something like this: The excitement of lofty preseason expectations in August turned to nervousness during sloppy performances in September turned to a strange blend of anger, disbelief and shock went it all went into the toilet in October turned to an admiration of how the Lions regrouped in November.

Saturday’s outdoor hockey game in the world’s most famed baseball stadium no doubt elicited some mixed emotions, too, bringing the past and the future of Penn State football into simultaneous focus even as the present-day Lions played one of their most complete games of the season, shutting down a similarly shorthanded group of Clemson Tigers, 22-10.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

I’ve always hated the term “home-run hire” when it applies to coaches (or anyone else, really).

Sure, I suppose it’s better than a double hire or a single hire or a ground into double play hire, but my problem with it is anyone can hit a home run. Even the 175-pound second baseman gets a fat pitch now and then and pulls it over the fence.

If we are going to stick with a baseball analogy, I’d argue it’s better to have an ace hire than a home-run hire. Aces make it tough on the whole lineup. They compensate for a lack of defense or a competent bullpen or run support. And aces travel—they’re good in any ballpark, in any weather, against any style of offense. Keep your home-run hires. The aces are the guys who determine your ceiling and your floor.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

Once the calendar flips past Thanksgiving, if you’re one of the fortunate few teams who is at the top of college football’s food chain, you start turning your attention to the playoff.

If you’re not, you start thinking about next season.

All due respect to whatever low-tier bowl game the Nittany Lions might play in after barely defeating Rutgers on Saturday in Piscataway, most Penn State fans are focused on the future, and what an uncertain future it is. So much of what 2026 holds for the program will hinge on who the next head coach is, but the roster makeup just might play a role, too. Though the transfer portal has blurred these lines a bit, college football teams are still largely divided into three distinct groups: The guys who won’t be back next season because they’re out of eligibility and/or going to the league, the guys who will be back next season, and the incoming recruits and transfers.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

Before Terry Smith returned to Penn State as an assistant coach in 2014, he spent one season as an assistant coach at Temple under Matt Rhule.

The Nittany Lions’ interim coach might have put the final nails in his old boss’s chances of replacing James Franklin with Saturday’s 37-10 romp, while continuing to bolster his own increasingly enticing case in the process.

Rhule, of course, is Pat Kraft’s GUY. They were both at Temple when Rhule led the Owls to back-to-back 10-win seasons, which is the NFL equivalent of leading the Cleveland Browns to two straight AFC North titles. That and his own ties to Penn State and State College were ostensibly enough to keep him on Kraft’s short list even as the Cornhuskers’ promising season began to leak oil and Rhule—like many other coaches who are likely sending Franklin and Jimmy Sexton Christmas cards this year—signed a two-year contract extension to stay in Lincoln through 2032.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

I guess it only took the desire for the prestigious Land Grant Trophy to finally get Penn State into the Big Ten win column.

The Nittany Lions traveled to East Lansing on Saturday in danger of going 0-7 in conference play, which would have surpassed the nadir set by the supremely forgettable 2003 Nittany Lions, who also lost their first six conference games before beating (cough) Indiana in Beaver Stadium. They went to Spartan Stadium the following week and lost 41-7.

This time, Dani Dennis-Sutton and the Penn State defense showed up (after taking their first snap off), the special teams blocked another punt, and the offense did what it has had a surprisingly difficult time of doing this season and gave the damn ball to Fatman.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

When you’ve been up for a long time and suddenly find yourself down, the number of teams who spent most of those up years under your foot but now are quick to line up to get some payback can be shocking.

Indiana, which served as a cure-all for several good-but-not-great Penn State teams following tough losses to the likes of Ohio State and Michigan over the years, was the latest to take a turn pecking on the carcass of the Nittany Lions on Saturday.

Except this Indiana team was all ‘growed up.’

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

The Penn State team that took the field in Columbus on Saturday was a very different team than the last one that had played Ohio State a year ago. It was also a very different team than the one that had started this season.

After a relatively even first half, though, the Buckeyes made it look like the same old predictable horror movie that has played out on so many Fall afternoons.

With an interim head coach and what increasingly appears to be an interim quarterback, Penn State fought bravely against the nation’s No. 1 team, but in the process displayed that it was not at all equipped to handle it for four quarters and really wasn’t even if Drew Allar, Tony Rojas and (gulp) James Franklin had been on the field and sideline, either.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

Expectation: Adding Jim Knowles, the coordinator of the nation’s best defense a year ago, to a Penn State defense that was already among the nation’s top 10 would allow the Nittany Lions to be a true lockdown unit.

Reality: Penn State is a middle-of-the-pack defense in the Big Ten that hasn’t really stopped the run at all since conference play began.

Expectation: Five-star running back Nick Singleton, who ran for 2,912 yards in his first three seasons, would have another banner year behind a veteran offensive line despite continuing to split carries and reps with roommate Kaytron Allen.

Reality: Singleton is averaging 3.6 yards per carry, doesn’t yet have 100 yards total in four Big Ten games, and can’t seem to stop running directly into defenders.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

EXT. MIDWESTERN FARM/KINNICK STADIUM – NIGHT

RED GRANGE (ghost) walks out of cornfield, stumbles into Kinnick Stadium, watches Penn State and Iowa live…because streaming doesn’t exist in the afterlife. As the clock strikes zero, Grange approaches another legend.

GRANGE

Is this college football hell?

KIRK FERENTZ (shrugging)

It’s Iowa.

Annnd scene…

All kinds of unpredictable stuff happens every week all over the country in college football. Kinnick Stadium at night is a different animal. In one sense, one of the nation’s loudest environments against a top-10 defense is a nightmare venue for a team starting a redshirt freshman quarterback. In another sense, if you’re gonna bounce back from one of the most gut-punching weeks—hell, months—in program history, why not go for broke and play like you have nothing to lose against a team that has made a living off of beating more talented teams with a lot to lose?

The Nittany Lions, with Terry Smith and Ethan Grunkemeyer (and, uhhhhh, Jaxon Smolik) leading the way rather than James Franklin and Drew Allar, played mostly like they had nothing to lose in Saturday’s 25-24 loss to the Hawkeyes, using turnovers and the churning legs of Kaytron Allen to hang around until the final minutes, when Grunkemeyer’s inexperience and Andy Kotelnicki’s, um, familiar habits stalled the offense.

Continue reading

Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.

It’s an argument that can be applied to all sorts of life situations but was ready-made for football coaches:

Do you go with the devil you know, or the devil you don’t?

Penn State fans had been going around and around with this one for a few years before this season and the fateful three-week stretch that sealed James Franklin’s fate. On the one side, you had the optimists, who felt Franklin was pushing the program ever closer to the top of the summit, one that was more easily accessible with the expanded playoff format, and that maybe they were a player or a coordinator or a fat donation away. On the other, the fans who had long since made up their mind about the — and they never tired of using this term — “used-car salesman” whose tendency to come up short in big games was about a sure a thing as there was in sports. Give them someone else — anyone else.

I guess now we’ll find out one way or the other, right?

Continue reading