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As we approach what might just be the curtain call for the Blue-White Game, we need to acknowledge the sheer value it has provided to the Penn State football team in terms of continuing preparations for the upcoming season.

Lol jk it’s a glorified practice.

However, over the years, that glorified practice, which has taken many shapes and forms as the program has undergone leadership changes and college football has, um, changed a bit itself, has had intangible but significant value for the program’s many fans.

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Drew Allar is getting a lot of pub this offseason. The Nittany Lions’ strong-armed, floppy-haired senior quarterback is being mentioned among the best college players at his position for 2025 and his potential at the next level is also a hot topic as the draft approaches. He’ll spend the summer answering questions about what he learned from last season (the disappointing finale against Notre Dame in particular), how he plans to expand his leadership, why Andy Kotelnicki is fun to play for, what Lion legend-turned-assistant coach Trace McSorley has brought to the QB room, et cetera et cetera.

But how much Allar improves, or even how well he plays, will only matter if he gets the help he didn’t have for his first two seasons as a starter.

As we race toward Allar’s final season at Penn State, the elephant in the Lasch Building remains the same: Who in the name of Freddie Scott is going to step up and be an alpha dog in Penn State’s wide receiver room?

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The non-news news of the week in Penn State football land as we creep toward the (final?) Blue-White Game was James Franklin expressing pleasure that the program now has the “alignment” he’s been asking for his entire Nittany Lion tenure.

It’s non-news because, well, in local circles, Franklin has been saying this for a couple of years now, praising AD Pat Kraft and university president Neeli Bendapudi at several public turns for helping bring about this ever-elusive alignment, the definition of which we’ll get to in a second. For national guys, in this case Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman of On3, hearing this stuff for the first time is worth noting and thus, news.

Because, truly, both outside State College, where Penn State finally inched its way into legitimate playoff contending status last season, and inside of it, where every move and utterance Franklin has made since 2014 is dissected and debated, what alignment means for the coach and the program could be a fairly big deal.

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Penn State’s annual Pro Day lacked a little star power this year. Not because the Nittany Lions didn’t produce any first-round talent; on the contrary, the first couple rounds of April’s NFL Draft will likely include several alumni, but because a pair of soon-to-be multi-millionaires — Abdul Carter and Tyler Warren — sat out the festivities as they were still recovering from injuries on the heels of a 16-game season.

How the Nittany Lions replace those stars in 2025, at both the positions they play and the sort of impact they had on the field, should be one of the keys to another promising season.

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At this level of football, where the talent is so evenly matched and the margins are so, so slim, the outcomes become less about the stellar plays and more about the mistakes.

Penn State made the biggest error on a night both teams committed their fair share, Drew Allar’s inexplicable interception with 33 seconds left that set up Notre Dame’s game-winning field goal, but the Nittany Lions made more than enough mistakes big and small before that to bring what had been a strong postseason run to a sobering end.

The Nittany Lions did a lot of good stuff in their final game of the season. They ran for 204 yards. They turned the Fighting Irish over twice and nearly came up with another on a Notre Dame fumble. They responded after the Irish had scored 17 unanswered points to take a 7-point fourth-quarter lead, then came up with a big stop in the final minute to give Allar and the offense a chance to win the game or at least send it into overtime.

But, upon closer inspection, it was a performance built more on sand than stone.

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Sometimes, the universe corrects itself.

For all the annual handwringing (most of it coming from the western part of the state) about whether Penn State and Pitt should play every season, the natural rival that the Nittany Lions have needed all this time has always been Notre Dame.

Two perennially strong programs from excellent schools, with rabid fan and alumni bases and distinctive, lucrative national brands. When they battled in the 80s and early 90s as independents, it was the marquee game on both teams’ schedules. When Penn State joined the Big Ten in 1993, it was somewhat understandable the Irish would rotate off the schedule … although, Notre Dame, positioned smack dab in the middle of Big Ten country, was already playing teams from that conference each season anyway.

But aside from a fan-servicey, mostly forgettable home-and-home split in the mid-2000s, this series has long been dormant. It took the expanded college playoff to renew it again. And if anyone—Pat Kraft, Pete Bevacqua, James Franklin, Marcus Freeman, hell, Tony Petitti—has any sense, this won’t be the only matchup between these teams we see for another decade plus.

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Maybe it’s just not going to happen this season. Maybe Penn State is never going to play a complete 60-minute game.

But maybe, just maybe, these Nittany Lions won’t have to do that to complete their primary goal.

Penn State turned in another uneven performance in Tuesday’s Fiesta Bowl, but the best parts were better … and the other parts weren’t as bad, allowing the Lions to cruise to a mostly comfortable 31-14 win over Boise State and advance to the national semifinals.

In the middle two quarters, the Lions’ offense was hamstrung by penalties and mystifying third-down playcalling, and a defense that was missing Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Abdul Carter allowed the Boise State passing attack to move the ball up and down the field.

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With all due respect to Abdul Carter and Jaylen Reed, the strength of Penn State’s sensational defense throughout the (exceedingly longer) 2024 season has been its balance, its depth, its collective skill and power. There are very few, if any, weak links in the chain, and the way the Nittany Lions are playing together on that side of the ball in the ultimate team sport has brought them here, where they are one of the last eight teams standing.

It should also serve them well against a singular offensive weapon the likes of which this program hasn’t seen in several years.

Boise State, which entertains Penn State on New Year’s Eve, is led by tailback Ashton Jeanty, who in most seasons would have entered this game as the reigning Heisman Trophy winner if not for the diverse skill set of another singular talent, Colorado’s Travis Hunter. The Jacksonville, Florida, native leads the nation in carries (344), rushing yards (2,497), and rushing touchdowns (29), and he has put up a mind-boggling 5,505 yards from scrimmage over 39 games over the last three seasons.

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The fans did their job. Considering the cold, and the approaching holiday, and the short-ish turnaround, and the optimists who decided to save their money for Glendale, and the students on break, the (cough) announced 106,013 who came to Beaver Stadium for Penn State’s first playoff game created the type of game-tilting atmosphere they have become known for, forcing several false starts on a heretofore potent SMU offense and helping to keep the Mustangs off-kilter for most of the afternoon.

Not to the extent that the Penn State defense did, though.

That unit dominated during the Nittany Lions’ 38-10 victory, and it is the chief reason why Penn State is not only moving on in the first 12-team tournament but why it is capable of being the last one standing.

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Beaver Stadium will once again be in the national spotlight this week, when the Nittany Lions host their first playoff game. Abdul Carter and Tyler Warren and Drew Allar and Nick Singleton will all attract that figurative spotlight as well, though probably not to the extent that the man who leads them will command it.

It’s yet another big game for James Franklin, who has not exactly risen to the challenge in, well, almost any of the big games he’s seen at Penn State.

It’s really the only major knock on an 11-year coaching stint that has otherwise been sparkling, even when graded on a sanctions curve. Franklin recruits at a high level. He gets his players to the NFL. He beats the teams he is supposed to beat (read that sentence again, and file it away for just a bit later), and often by several touchdowns. He understands and protects the value of the Penn State brand, and he has spent a decade behind the scenes beating down doors and slashing through red tape to bring his program up to par from a resource standpoint.

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