Guarantee games are the worrrrrrrst.

But, everyone plays them, and until no one plays them, everyone will continue to play them. College football coaches take no prisoners and spare no expense to get a chance at a playoff berth/shot at a natty, and if that means putting a win on the schedule that barely qualifies as such, kinda like Penn State’s 63-7 pasting of FCS Delaware, consider it done.

While these games have seemingly little value for folks other than the true football sickos (hi, guys), 6-year-olds who are learning the game or the families of the third-teamers who actually get to see their sons play, they can be mildly instructive when it comes to A) gauging the overall health of the program by the respective quality levels of its depth chart and B) seeing how fundamentally prepared/mentally disciplined each of those levels are between the whistles.

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There was a lot of Week 1 stuff on Saturday night in Beaver Stadium. Missed tackles. Confusion on blocking assignments. Burned timeouts in the middle of both halves. We won’t talk about the field goal kicking.

But there was also a lot of stuff that you could see — and, if you’re a Penn State fan, desperately hope to see — holding up in October and November. And while the Nittany Lions’ season-opening 38-15 win over a game but outmatched West Virginia team won’t turn many heads around the country away from, uh, Deion Sanders postgame interviews, it can be a pretty damn encouraging night if you view it as pretext for the season at large.

Some of the stuff we thought we knew — Nicky and the Fatman would again be awesome, Manny Diaz would bring pressure, Mike Yurcich would draw up some fun stuff — turned out to be true, but some of the stuff we thought we knew — Whither Chop Robinson? Was the offensive line really any better? Is linebacker truly a strength on this defense? — will perhaps require further examination at later dates.

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Q: Why is Drew Allar like a farmer?

A: He’s been throwin’ seeds all spring and summer!

As Penn State’s 2023 football season mercifully approaches, all eyes are on the Nittany Lions’ rocket-laser-armed quarterback. His teammates have raved about his abilities. Longtime Associated Press beat guy Ralph Russo wondered if he isn’t the most important player in the country. His grrrrreatness is validated by none other than Tony the Tiger!

What’s more, the addition of Allar to the starting lineup (OK, so he hasn’t technically been named the starter…yet) also means offensive coordinator/mad scientist Mike Yurcich finally has a player who will force defenses to cover just about every part of the field. Thought Penn State had a dynamic offense with (current Packers QB2!!) Sean Clifford? Wait’ll they get a load of these guys when Allar is ripping the ball 30, 40, 50 yards downfield.

Here’s the thing, though. Arm talent is a great, great thing for a quarterback to have. And Allar’s size (6-foot-5 with some added bulk and strength) enables him to see the field and provide a stable platform for that aforementioned rocket laser arm. But if arm talent and size were all it took, Anthony Morelli and Christian Hackenberg would have achieved far more at Penn State than Michael Robinson and Trace McSorley. Allar is going to make a bunch of plays that few other quarterbacks can make this season. But it is the plays that a lot more guys have the ability make—but often don’t—that he’ll have to make consistently if Penn State is going to have the type of season that matches his talent.

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There are only two things, if you believe the word on the street, that stand to prevent a Nittany Lion offense that appears to be stacked from threatening to blow up the scoreboard this autumn:

1. Drew Allar needs some time to become the real deal (quite possible) OR he isn’t the real deal (shut yo’ mouf!!)
2. Allar is money but his wide receiving corps isn’t up to snuff OR they don’t provide him enough support to, um, be money

Maybe KeAndre Lambert-Smith is ready to make the jump from ‘Occasionally Explosive’ to ‘Consistently The Man.’ Maybe Tre Wallace is going to step up and be the solid No. 2 that this offense sorely needs. Maybe Dante Cephas will be able to produce at the Big Ten level the way he did in the MAC for Kent State. Or maybe someone will emerge from the grab bag containing Omari Evans, Malick Meiga, Liam Clifford, Kaden Saunders, Malik McClain, Anthony Ivey, Cristian Driver, Tyler Johnson (this meeting room is standing-room only) and be a modified Cinderella story not unlike Jordan Norwood and Deon Butler exploding onto the scene from relative obscurity in 2005.

Or, just maybe, the group as a whole will underwhelm, to the extent that a Parker Washington-Mitchell Tinsley-led unit did for much of 2022 or, perhaps, even worse.

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I find myself against the continued addition of schools to the Big Ten for reasons both mathematical — how many programs can you cram into a conference before you remove the “Ten” from its name? Twenty? Forty? — and practical — having women’s volleyball or men’s soccer teams bussing or flying to all parts of the country during the week is no good for athletic budgets, athlete well-being, or in-person fan experience.

When it comes to football expansion, however, I say bring it on.

Take a look at Penn State’s 2023 schedule. Whether you’re bearish (you see three or four losses), bullish (you see one or two losses), or super-bullish (no losses and no margins of victory less than 20 points), there are a handful of games you know are simply not going to be competitive, even accounting for the annual noon kick/looking ahead/hurricane remnant games in which Penn State forgets to show up for the first half and winds up winning by 10 instead of 28.

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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.

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The reason quarterback is the most important position on the field is that the best of them provide the best chance to create plays when it looks as though no play is there, to beat a blitz or a stunt or perfect coverage with a pinpoint throw or a timely scramble. Much of the excitement that surrounds Penn State coming out of the spring is that the Nittany Lions appear to have at least one of those playmaking quarterbacks ready to roll this fall.

The rest of the excitement, if not most of it, should be based on the notion that if Drew Allar and/or Beau Pribula aren’t fully ready when the season begins, the guys around them should give them time to get there.

Saturday’s Blue-White Game was the first actual scrimmage format for the Nittany Lions since 2019 but it was also still a Blue-White Game, which means any firm conclusions other than that it was the sport of football and that the players on the field will make up the majority of the players who will take the field in the games that count should be avoided.

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When Patrick Kraft was named the athletic director at Penn State just about a year ago, he inherited one of the nation’s largest and most accomplished collection of teams, led by a football program that has gone a few more years without a natty than most fans would like but still boasts a reputation few can match and backed by one of the officially largest and unofficially most fervent alumni bases in the world. It was an enviable gig, as far as AD gigs go.

Fast forward 12 months and Kraft and his team are trying to crack the same puzzle that is stumping many of his counterparts around the country: How do you leverage passionate fans who are ready to write checks to build an NIL surplus that directly allows you to assemble the teams they root for? And, in Penn State’s case in particular, how do you manage that without tripping the political land mines that are unique to (Usually) Happy Valley?

Look around the Nittany Lions and you can see examples of the public face of NIL everywhere: Nick Singleton’s deal with West Shore Homes. Drew Allar, Kalen King, Olu Fashanu and Abdul Carter driving Teslas. Students eating Roman Bravo Young pizzas. Name, image and likeness helping various brands and putting extra cash in the pockets of the student athletes. Smiles, handshakes, American capitalism at work.

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College football’s best teams stay on top by replacing NFL talent with more NFL talent, by ensuring that the Next Man Up is as good as the Last Man Who Left.

Like so many teams looking to make the next step to that elite level, Penn State is working to develop that sort of dynamic at as many positions as possible, though it might already have it in a relatively surprising part of the field.

After years of fielding solid, if unspectacular, defensive backfields, often playing behind front sevens stacked with guys who would go on to play for paychecks on Sundays, the Nittany Lions have quietly built a secondary that can stand up to any in the nation and are showing no signs that it’s not sustainable.

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If life is like a box of chocolates (you never know what you’re gonna get), then pro days are like a box of donuts (you pretty much know exactly what you’re going to get, but certain varieties are more popular than others).

The range of players working out in Holuba Hall for pro scouts each year extends from guys who will be on the stage at the NFL Draft to those who haven’t played in a few seasons but are there to take one last swing at a professional future. It is the players in the middle who are often the most compelling, the chocolate glazed who won’t get picked until the cream-filled and jelly donuts are gone but just might be a good fit for the right squad.

Players like … Sean Clifford.

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