Sponsor: This edition of For The Blogy’s 2023-24 Sunday Column is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

Year One of the Mike Rhoades Era at Penn State wrapped up on Thursday in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament, when a potentially game-winning 3-pointer by Puff Johnson failed to connect, leaving the Nittany Lions two points short of an Indiana team they’d beaten twice during the regular season. The loss left Penn State at 16-17 for the year, with 10 of those victories coming against conference opponents.

In the most basic sense, it was a step back from the previous season, when the Micah Shrewsberry- and Jalen Pickett-led Nittany Lions caught fire down the stretch and advanced to the Round of 32 of the NCAA Tournament. In the more nuanced and perhaps more important senses, it was an encouraging start to the next chapter of program history after Shrewsberry had metaphorically set fire to the previous chapter when he bolted for Notre Dame shortly after the season.

Rhoades was left with just three returning scholarship players — Kanye Clary, Demetrius Lilley and Jameel Brown — who had accounted for 5% of the team’s minutes played and 5% of its scoring in 2022-23. Those players totaled 17% of the minutes and 22% of the scoring this season, numbers that dropped significantly when Clary left/was shown the door in February (more on this in a bit). Shrewsberry also took the entirety of Penn State’s Class of 2023 with him, leaving the transfer portal as Rhoades’ lone option to fill out the roster, on incredibly short notice.

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A not-so-long time from now, in a college football galaxy not so far-fetched …

It’s 2032. Penn State, having dispatched Michigan, Ohio State, USC, Oregon, Boise State, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Florida State, Central Michigan, BYU, and Navy to win the Big Ten (which now includes 36 teams), clinches a 2 seed in the 16-team playoff.

Nittany Lion fans are excited for many reasons, including that it represents the program’s first conference title since 2016, and that Penn State will get to host at least one playoff game in Beaver Stadium, which now seats a cozy 85,000 thanks to a six-year renovation process that cost a mere $3.2 billion. Playoff tickets cost $450-700 apiece, which represents only a slight per-game increase from the season ticket package. Plans are underway to erect a 2,000-square foot sportsbook on the concourse, which is expected to generate an additional $2 million in revenue for the university each year.

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Sponsor: This edition of For The Blogy’s 2023-24 Sunday Column is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

The most important person on the Penn State football team in 2024 isn’t Drew Allar.

It’s not Nick Singleton.

It’s not super-jacked linebacker-turned defensive end Abdul Carter, nor prodigal son wide receiver Julian Fleming.

It’s not James Franklin.

No, the one guy who will have the most influence on whether the Nittany Lions finally return to the national championship summit, make the elusive first playoff appearance, or have another so-so, ho-hum 10-3 campaign is Andy Kotelnicki, the new offensive coordinator.

Now, he’s going to need a lot of help, from all of the guys mentioned above, plus returning starters like Kaytron Allen and Tyler Warren and KJ Winston, and guys stepping into larger roles like Dani Dennis-Sutton and Drew Shelton and Tony Rojas, and from the other new coordinators, Tom Allen and Justin Lustig, and from strength coach Chuck Losey and his staff, and … you get it. Ultimate team sport, lots of moving parts, calories to consume and playbooks to study etc. etc.

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Sponsor: This edition of For The Blogy’s 2023-24 Sunday Column is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

5 + 7 = 14.

No, this isn’t the new math your kids are learning in schools, but it’s how math works in college football these days. Before the digital ink dried on the CFP press release announcing the new “5+7” 12-team format (five highest-ranked conference champs plus seven at-large berths) that model became instantly antiquated as word leaked that discussions on how to shift it to a 14-team field by as early as 2026 were already underway.

More teams, of course, playing for the biggest trophy at the end of the season means more money for a sport that is already Scrooge McDucking it, but it also means more opportunities for more teams. At least in theory.

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Sponsor: This edition of For The Blogy’s 2023 Sunday Column is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

The worst part of watching Penn State men’s basketball during its inglorious Big Ten history hasn’t been the frequent defeats as much as the predictability.

For so many years, in almost every game, you knew the basic range of outcomes — narrow win against an equally mediocre opponent, hard-fought loss against a mid-tier foe, lopsided defeat to a top-10 squad — almost before the game, hell, the season began. Sure, there were a few big upsets here and a couple blown games against less talented squads there, but for the most part, the Nittany Lions played to their level of talent, which was usually lacking compared to that of the majority of teams in their conference.

That has not been the case during the past month.

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Friday’s announcement of the Big Ten and SEC joining forces for an “advisory group” didn’t sound like so much of a declaration of all-out war against the NCAA as a mere reminder of the massive amount of firepower those conferences wield in the grand scheme of college athletics and college football in particular.

Commissioners Tony Petitti (pictured above next to NCAA president/frenemy Charlie Baker at a Senate Judiciary Hearing) and Greg Sankey used carefully parsed language in the press release, which also included phrases like “address the significant challenges facing college athletics and opportunities for the betterment of the student-athlete experience” and the group “will engage with other constituencies as necessary.”

Loosely translated, the 259-word release said, “Figure your stuff out, NCAA, or we’ll figure it out ourselves.”

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Sponsor: For The Blogy’s offseason football coverage is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

Admit it, Penn State fans — part of you will miss Jim Harbaugh.

Perhaps no other modern coach, at any level of any sport, is as histrionic along the gameday sideline or as unabashedly corny/arrogant with the media. It’s awful to watch your team lose to his, and see the smirks and fist pumps that are the spoils of victory, but it makes it that much sweeter when your team beats his and you can see the scowl and misery on his face.

The other parts of you, and the rest of the Big Ten, won’t miss the former Michigan coach, who led his team to a natty this season when he wasn’t serving suspensions for recruiting violations … and sign-stealing and is now back in the NFL with the Chargers. Harbaugh’s departure is only one of several big changes to the Big Ten in 2024, but many of those changes could be taken advantage of by James Franklin’s Nittany Lions.

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The “alignment” between the Penn State football program and the athletic and university administrations James Franklin has so often talked about during the past couple of years, it would seem, is yielding some tangible results.

Reporting this week by Ben Jones at StateCollege.com showed that the Nittany Lions’ recruiting budget more than doubled over the past year, up to $2.8 million, a figure that would put a program that has perennially finished in the nation’s top 15 in recruiting rankings most years under Franklin among the five best in the nation in recruiting spending, which entails many things but was defined by the fiscal year report as costs of transportation, lodging and meals for recruits, costs of transportation for staff (including private aircraft), plus phone charges, postage, “and such.”

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Kalen DeBoer just reached the college football coaching summit.

After leading Washington to the national championship game, DeBoer will succeed Nick Saban at Alabama, where he will have a returning roster loaded with Sunday talent, facilities and resources that most coaches could only dream about, and arguably the most prominent brand in college athletics. It’s hard to think of any better situations. And yet, it will probably be the hardest job in the sport for at least the next few years.

Why? Because of the staggering expectations.

The Crimson Tide just wrapped up another 12-win season and reached the playoff for the eighth time in the 10 seasons of that format. And somehow, because of the impossibly high bar Saban set, that qualifies as a disappointing season in Tuscaloosa. DeBoer won’t get much if any time to adjust to the rigors of playing in the SEC each week or the recruiting battles against Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Bama’s other peers. He will be expected to deliver, and at Bama, for the better part of the last two decades, “deliver” has meant “win national titles.”

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Imagine if the rest of life worked the way the transfer portal has now given coaches and schools a second chance to land the big recruit fish they missed out on the first time around.

You ask your dream girl to prom, only to watch her go with your high school nemesis instead … and then she spends a week at the beach with you after graduation.

You don’t get the job after nailing all of the interviews, wind up taking a position you’re just OK with at another company … and then the first company calls back six months later and offers you the position you interviewed for but with better benefits.

You get out-bid for the house you (but mostly your wife) really, really wanted … and then the new buyer backs out at the last minute and the seller calls you instead of putting the house back on the market.

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