Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2022 season coverage was sponsored by FANATICS. Penn State 2023 Rose Bowl championship on-field hats & T-shirts (the same ones the players wore) are available right HERE.

We just witnessed one of the greatest and most cherished traditions of a sport that is, more than any other, built on them, passing into history. With Pasadena playing host to a playoff semifinal next season and the erstwhile Granddaddy of Them All set to become just another postseason venue in the years to follow, the time of the Big Ten and PAC-12 champions meeting in the Rose Bowl has officially ended. The last paragraph of that era’s closing chapter has been written, and that’s as close you’re going to get to finality right now in the volatile world of college athletics. Whether you enthusiastically embraced the Rose Bowl mystique or dismissed it as so much Big Ten navel-gazing, it’s hard to deny there was something special – something uniquely “college football” – in the annual clash of the cold-weather Rust Belt and Sun-drenched West Coast bathed in the light of the California Golden Hour before a national audience on New Year’s Day. And now it’s over.

On to the knee-jerk Thoughts & Opinions, fresh from the Nittany Valley…

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For our readers who have been A) abducted for the past month or B) experiencing never-ending rolling power blackouts or C) stuck in line at PHL, DTW, IAH, or some other three-lettered torture chamber/airport since early December trying to reschedule your canceled Southwest flight, All-American Penn State cornerback Joey Porter Jr. will be the only healthy-ish Nittany Lion defender choosing to sit the Rose Bowl on January 2. If not the greatest cornerback who ever called Beaver Stadium home, then certainly slated to be the highest-drafted, JPJ opted to forego the free trip to Pasadena, thus eliminating any chance that a tweak, pull, sprain, or tear might jeopardize the millions of dollars that await him on future Sundays. We certainly wish JPJ luck, but as his famous father’s former boss like to say: “We’ll focus our attentions on the players who make themselves available to us.”

Now, let’s talk about Ji’Ayir Brown. Can we talk about Ji’Ayir please, Mac? I’ve been dying to talk about Ji’Ayir with you all day. After setting the pace for all of College Football in interceptions last year (6), Brown leads all B1G safeties in PFF pass rush grade (88.5), pass rushes (44), sacks (3) and QB pressures (10). If we expand our search parameters to include the Pac-12, the only guy who tops any of those numbers is (ironically) Utah’s Cole Bishop. Coincidence…or conspiracy?

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Sponsor: Looking for last-minute seats to The Granddaddy Of Them All? Go with a trusted source, STUBHUB. Be sure to use our FTB STUBHUB LINK so that we too can wet our beaks in the deep pool of Service and Convenience Fees.

Keyvone Lee: BACK. Caedan Wallace, Juice Scruggs and Olu Fashanu: BACK to BACK to BACK. Nick Singleton: FAST. Kaytron Allen: FAT(man).

After patching the run game together for much of November with wads of Hubba-Bubba, rubber cement and the free, second can of Flex Seal (James Franklin ordered “within the next 15 minutes” when the commercial popped on – Smart Man), the Nittany Lions appear to be back at full strength against the Utes when these two squads clash just on the other side of the calendar crease.

Penn State’s tandem of true freshmen (Singleton and Allen) combined for 2,346 all-purpose yards…more than 400 yards better than any single player in College Football this year. There’s a lesson there.

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• 10-2. Pretty much a Cotton Candy season. Enjoyable but hardly filling and a tad empty but sure as hell tastier than whatever gruel Mom slap on our plates in 2020 and 2021. As far as the way the 12-game slate played out, this season reminds us a bunch of the 2017 season – double-digit wins but none of them worth memorializing with one of those commemorative plates or coins they’re always advertising to insomniacs on TV at 3 a.m. In 2017, Penn State’s “best” win came in the dying breaths of an Instant Classic at Iowa – a team that eventually won 8 games. In 2022, Penn State’s “best” win came in the dying breaths of an Instant Classic at Purdue – a team that won its 8th game today.

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Knowing us, of course we saved our wildest tailgate recipe of the season for last. Yes, even wilder than making pork poppable, like we did with our Kielbasa Tots creation.

Hear us out:

Peanut Butter.

Chocolate.

Chicken.

Yep, you read that right.

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