Dispensing Thoughts & Opinions: Penn State vs. Northwestern

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• Meteorologists will tell you today’s unrelenting rain came from the remnants of Hurricane Ian. Octogenarian Penn State season-ticket holders will tell you it was God crying at the administration’s choice to sell alcohol inside Beaver Stadium.

Enough fun…time to vent:

• Cardholding members of the Clifford Club, please stand down. Don’t you dare scoff at social media posts suggesting that Drew Allar should replace Clifford like you all did last week. Read the room. Because, honestly, the 6^th-year senior who is a just a few months shy of reaching the legal age requirement to run for Congress played like a true freshman, at best, today. Sure, it was wet. It was also wet in East Lansing back in 2019 when Clifford threw for 3 TDs in a convincing win, so the weather can’t be an excuse. It’s asinine to claim anymore, ‘Starting Allar would be giving up on the season.’ Quite the contrary. Keeping Clifford as QB1 would be giving up on the season, lowering the Nittany Lions’ ceiling of success to 10-2 and a worthless NY6 bowl appearance no one gives a flying rip about. Allar’s insertion as QB1 DOES lower the floor for Penn State — 9-3 at worst and a non-NY6 bowl appearance no one gives a flying rip about — but also gives the Nittany Lions a better shot of escaping this upcoming trinity of scheduling pain with 2 wins (hell, maybe 3…dare to dream).

• More on the QB switch that will never happen…If you’re James Franklin, what are you afraid of?!?! You’re untouchable. Thanks to Jimmy Sexton’s shell-game negotiation slam dunk vs. Sandy Barbour — where the cunning agent spooked PSU’s former AD into inking an absolute albatross of a contact by dangling the threat of phantom interest from USC and LSU – Franklin is absolutely invincible right now…so roll the damn dice, man. Play Allar. What’s Pat Kraft gonna do? Fire You? HA! Try as they might, Penn State ticket holders couldn’t drink enough $10 Coors Lights to pay for that massive buyout.

• Glad to find out Kaytron Allen isn’t part Mogwai and can indeed get wet. Was scared there for a minute. 99.9999999999% sure Franklin will balk if asked, but you have to assume the talented true freshman from IMG was suspended for the first half vs. Northwestern for something minor. Because, man, if there was ever an afternoon to feed the slimmed-down “Fatman” this was freakin’ it!

• Don’t let the opponent, or your blind rage at the offense’s toe-stub performance, discount what Manny Diaz and his defense did today. They absolutely handed Mike Yurcich a Get Out of Turnover Jail Free card, bailing out the generous-to-a-fault Nittany Lions’ attack by not allowing a single point off of 5 giveaways…several of which gifted Pat Fitzgerald’s plodders excellent field position. It’s still early, but Diaz’s hire might rival Franklin’s decision to woo Joe Moorhead away from head coaching duties at Fordham to run a P5 offense back in 2016.

• A toast of my much-cheaper can of beer to all the shivering masochists inside Beaver Stadium. Bravo. To show up, and then stay for the whole game, despite fighting a losing battle against Mother Nature’s worst says a lot about your character and sanity. All 35,000 or so of you have true Penn State spirit…and apparently no better, dryer place to go on a Saturday.

• The heck was up with ESPN’s replays today? They were strobe-y as all get out, like one of those crappy children’s flipbooks your parents gave you 30 years ago and provided roughly 30 seconds of fun before you tossed it aside and played with your He-Man instead. Never again, Mickey.

• What watching the Aaron Judge cutaway 8^th inning at-bat felt like to us:

• Glad to see Tyler Elsdon return in the 3^rd Quarter after exiting with an apparent injury the previous half. KLS’ injury would concern us more if we weren’t so down on Penn State’s passing game. Harrison Wallace proved he can drop the rare outlier nice deep ball from Sean Clifford just as well as KLS, so we’re good there.

• Don’t freak out if some Diet Coke drinker from Topeka drops Penn State a spot or two in this week’s AP Poll. Rankings mean absolutely nothing. If Penn State handles business, no one of any importance – namely the conference room of starch-shirted white males that comprise the CFP committee — will remember this waterlogged waste of 3 hours.