It’s March 27 and Penn State is just about a full week into spring practice.

Too early to write about the quarterbacks?

Naaaaahhhhh.

We’ll start this piece with a caveat: It is very likely, given how tough it is for a true freshman quarterback to get up to Division I speed, James Franklin’s lengthy history of favoring the incumbent, and Sean Clifford’s enormity of experience as the incumbent, that Clifford will start every game and play the vast majority of the reps this season should he, the good Lord willing and Spring Creek don’t rise, stay healthy.

That said, let’s talk through a few scenarios that are less likely but – as are most things in college football – quite possible, and explore the pros and cons of Penn State rolling with a known or an unknown at the game’s most important position this fall.

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Sandy Barbour announced this week that she will retire this summer, leaving Penn State with a vacancy at the head of its athletic department at the same time its new president, Neela Bendapudi, is transitioning into the big chair.

Athletic directors – not unlike quarterbacks and head coaches – usually receive disproportionate amounts of blame and credit for failure or success, but it’s still a crucial hire for Bendapudi and the university’s board of trustees, one that could shape the future for one of the country’s largest athletic departments and its prominent and not-so-prominent teams.

Instead of getting into the list of potential candidates, today we’ll look at some of the tasks that will await Barbour’s successor, in rough order of importance.

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If you’re of the belief that Micah Shrewsberry’s first season as Penn State’s head basketball coach, which drew to a close with Friday’s loss to Purdue in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament, was an indication that the Nittany Lions have brighter hoops days ahead, there are plenty of signs you can point to.

You might want to give it just one more year, though.

Though it’s true that Penn State will, once again, not be participating in the NCAA Tournament, or even the NIT, it was still hard to be unimpressed by the body of work Shrewsberry and his new staff put together, particularly with a roster that was, by no fault of their own, rather hastily assembled less than one year ago.

With six returning players – only four of which saw more than two minutes per game last season – and five transfers, Penn State won 14 games, including nine against Big Ten opponents. There were some ugly nights, to be sure – the lopsided loss at UMass in November, the ugly late-season home defeat to Nebraska (that didn’t look QUITE as bad when the Cornhuskers then won at Ohio State and Wisconsin) – and a few games where Shrewsberry wishes he had one or two possessions back. And the offense, which produced 64.6 points per game (dead last in the conference) managed to have at least a few ugly moments most nights.

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Signing Day has come and gone. Spring practice is still two weeks away. In some ways, it’s the slow season for Penn State football, but in others, there is no time of year that isn’t important. Right now, coaches and players are compiling and checking things off various lists – lists of exercises to complete in the weight room for the players, lists of practices to schedule and of recruits to woo for the coaches.

Writers, of course, love lists. And while there’s still a long way to go before we have a true semblance of a two-deep, it’s never too early to type out a list of a few areas that could be scale-tippers for a team that was all-too-often on the razor’s edge between wins and losses in 2021.

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Penn State has few recruiting showcases as effective as an autumn White Out game. One of them takes place in Indianapolis this week.

Eight Nittany Lions will be among the 300-plus NFL prospects at the league’s annual combine, a sneak preview of another NFL Draft that promises to have strong Penn State representation. For all the baffling struggles the Lions have had on the field the last couple of seasons, they have continued to produce – and develop – a significant number of professionals.

This year, that combine list includes Jahan Dotson, the sticky-handed wide receiver who probably would have been a Day 2 pick in the 2021 draft but decided to return for another season to help his team (which was in need of more help than even he could provide) and to continue to develop his own game (which he did). He’ll likely go at the end of Round 1 this spring, even in what is another deep wide receiver group.

It includes Jaquan Brisker, the former Lackawanna College safety who came on strong at the end of 2020 then had a tremendous final season this fall, showing skills in coverage, physicality and instincts as a tackler, and versatility. Another transfer, defensive end Arnold Ebiketie, was a productive player at Temple but turned a lot of heads against stiffer Big Ten competition this fall and, like Brisker, was a key catalyst for a vastly improved Penn State defense. He likely earned himself a jump of numerous spots up the draft board this season. Jordan Stout, tasked with filling the shoes of a punter who is now starting in the league (Blake Gillikin), stands a very good chance of becoming the first Penn State punter selected in the draft since John Bruno in 1987.

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It would be easy to tell who the good coaches were if they all had a few games with the exact same roster. If the players were the same, play-calling and strategy would become more evident. You’d be able to see which coach players played the hardest for, how the coaches made the individual talents form the most effective team fit.

Since this is not possible, we must measure the quality of coaches not just by how successful their teams are but how successful they are in relation to the talent and chemistry – and availability – of the players on the floor. And most coaches, particularly in an era where the transfer portal is less an option and more a matter of course, are in the habit of adjusting on the fly. It’s not about who can draw up the best play but who can find the play that the five guys on hand are best equipped to make.

This is where Micah Shrewsberry is in Year 1 of his Penn State tenure. He is making the most of what he has, and in doing so is producing a brand of basketball that isn’t exactly elegant but has made his first Nittany Lion team perhaps more competitive than it ought to be.

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They can’t all be Saquon Barkley.

Nick Scott figured that out during his second season at Penn State, when he switched from running back to safety. Six years later, the seventh-round draft choice will start for the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl, the latest – but probably not the last – in a decent-sized line of Nittany Lions who took non-traditional journeys to productive NFL careers.

There might have been something in the water in that 2014 recruiting class, James Franklin’s first at Penn State. Sure, there were stars then who remain stars now – Chris Godwin, Mike Gesicki – but there were many more players in that class who had to take a leap of faith, a huge swallow of pride or a hard look at the path they thought they were on for their paths to continue.

Scott’s Rams teammate, linebacker Troy Reeder, seemed destined to add to the legacy of Linebacker U after a redshirt freshman season that put him on the Big Ten’s All-Freshman team. And then he transferred – and this was before transferring was cool – to … Delaware. A three-time All-CAA selection, he joined the Rams as an undrafted rookie free agent in 2019 and has started 30 games – including each of the team’s last five playoff appearances – over the last three seasons.

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Two things can be true of Penn State’s offensive line in 2021:

1. The line wasn’t as bad as you thought it was. Yes, this was statistically the worst Nittany Lion offense in – squints at notes, winces – seven years, and oh yes, the line played its part, but the blame for the lack of production must be shared, from the tight ends who whiffed on blocks to the head-scratching short-yardage play calls to the open receivers Sean Clifford missed badly.
2. The line was still pretty damned bad.

The good news is that – on paper on recruiting rankings lists, anyway – help is on the way.

Saturday’s commitment from Jven Williams made the pride of Wyomissing the fourth offensive lineman prospect to join Penn State’s Class of 2023, on the heels of the four more offensive linemen the Nittany Lions added in the Class of 2022. Williams (ranked 96^th overall in 2023), Alex Birchmeier (31 in 2023), and Drew Shelton (121 in 2022) are all ranked among the top 150 overall prospects in their respective classes per the 247Composite ratings (2022 lineman JB Nelson, who enrolled last month, was the No. 2 overall junior-college prospect).

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Pro football’s GOAT QB, some pretty boy from Michigan, decided to retire this week (we think), a few days after one of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ all-time greats called it a wrap, which made me consider a few of Penn State’s all-time greats who were in the news this month, for one reason or another.

Russ Rose retired in December after 43 seasons of leading the Penn State women’s volleyball team and an NCAA-record 1,330 wins. Cael Sanderson continued what has been an unbelievable ride at the helm of the school’s wrestling program, as his No. 1 Nittany Lions took down hated rival and No. 2 Iowa on Friday night. And last week, fans mourned the 10th anniversary of the death of Joe Paterno, who won more games than any football coach in FBS/Division I-A history.

Three true greats there, to be sure. But which of them deserves the mantle of Greatest Penn State coach of all time (GPSCOAT)?

First, we should probably define the metrics of what makes a coach great. Is it the number of times they reached the summit of their sport? Paterno won two national titles in 46 seasons, compared to seven in 43 for Rose and eight – and counting – in 11 for Sanderson. However, the respective competition they faced must be considered.

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In college football, as is the case with many things in life, the more work you put in, the better the result usually – but not always – turns out to be.

In this sport, though, you need to be patient to see those results.

Penn State is hosting an important recruiting weekend for its Class of 2023 … but it will likely be no earlier than 2025 until those prospects (if of course they wind up at Penn State) will play significant roles on the field. The flip side of that, of course, is that the players who will likely shoulder the heaviest part of the load for the Nittany Lions in 2022 will come from the classes of 2019 and 2020.

And that leads us to what has been a not-so-minor issue for the Nittany Lions during these last two seasons of football purgatory; Penn State is putting together solid-to-strong recruiting classes on the front end, but not getting enough out of those classes by the time the players leave.

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