Happy Valley Ready To Party Like It’s 1999 (but hoping for a better ending)

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In the Summer of 1999, the airwaves were dominated by Ricky Martin, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez. The top movie at the box office was The Phantom Menace. A gallon of gas cost $1.17.

And Penn State had itself a hell of a football team.

The Nittany Lions had some intriguing talent on offense, with big-play wideout Chafie Fields, running backs Omar Easy and Eric McCoo, and a sometimes perplexing but usually productive QB tandem in Kevin Thompson and Rashard Casey. And the defense was absolutely loaded. Defensive end Courtney Brown and linebacker LaVar Arrington, who would go 1-2 in the NFL Draft the following spring, were terrors for opposing offensive lines and ball carriers but also benefited from playing alongside future pros Brandon Short, David Macklin, Bhawoh Jue, Bryan Scott and Justin Kurpeikis. They entered the season as the No. 3 team in the Associated Press rankings and quickly rose to No. 2 by utterly embarrassing No. 4 Arizona 41-7 in Beaver Stadium in the season opener.

We won’t get into the rest of that season, which seemed one of destiny (Arrington’s field-goal block to preserve the Pitt win, Fields’ long touchdown to seal the win at Miami) until Dan Bleeping Nystrom, other than to say it was the last time a Penn State team entered the fall with such high expectations.

There has been some water under the bridge since then. The Nittany Lions inexplicably collapsed when the century turned, posting four losing seasons in the next five, only to come roaring back with Big Ten title seasons in 2005 and 2008. Then the end of the Paterno era and the sanctions and Bill O’Brien’s fighters and James Franklin and a whole bunch of wins and more than a few letdowns in the biggest games and the transfer portal and NIL and administrative changes and a three-game playoff run and then here we are, on the cusp of a season that just might define Franklin’s legacy and the long-term direction of the program.

The roster is loaded. Drew Allar has one more chance to merge his world-class arm with his improved defense-reading chops and to correct his wild variability in the biggest spots. Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen could both wind up atop the all-time rushing list as well as first-tea All-Americans, especially behind what some are calling the nation’s best o-line. The wide receiver room has been almost completely overhauled, which can only be a good thing. Dani Dennis-Sutton, Zane Durant, AJ Harris and Zakee Wheatley lead a defense that lost some major firepower but should still be dynamic. And Jim Knowles calling the shots on defense with Andy Kotelnicki leading the offense represents perhaps the most complete staff Franklin has ever assembled.

And, unlike the 1999 team, which had most of its hopes dashed with the shocking Minnesota defeat and then fully extinguished a week later at the hand of a lumpy Michigan quarterback named Tom Brady, the current Penn State team can afford one loss, probably two, if they come at the hands of Ohio State and/or Oregon, and still make the playoff, which did not exist in 1999.

A couple of questions come to mind, one fairly straightforward and easily answered, and the other not so much. Can the 2025 Lions do what the 1999 Lions could not, and bring a national title back to State College? Sure, if they play to their considerable potential, stay reasonably healthy and a few things break the right way.

The other is: What took so long for this program to get back here?

The biggest obstacle has been the team that won it all last season, and has been consistently ranked ahead of Penn State in just about every year, then either outclasses it or outlasts it when the programs meet on the field. And in fairness, Ohio State has been the primary obstacle to every Big Ten team not named Michigan and most other would-be national contenders during the last 25 years.

At the same time, Penn State has been very good but not great during the last decade or so, and much of that is its own doing. The recruiting has been mostly solid, and near-elite in some respects, but the few weaknesses—first offensive line, then receiver—have shown out and been factors in the biggest games. The transfer portal now offers quick-ish fixes for teams to round out their rougher edges, and the next several weeks will show if the Lions, after several spins of the receiver transfer wheel, have finally smoothed over that area of the field, and if Kotelnicki and Knowles can collectively push the buttons in big spots that previous coordinators could not.

Were college football still mired in its previous form, where your title hopes could be crushed over the course of a few hours in September or October, the Nittany Lions might still be stuck in figurative purgatory, even with the heightened expectations. But, as the Buckeyes showed last season, the expanded playoff now offers reprieves, and that might be enough to get Penn State out of the relative rut it’s been in for all these years and into the still-small but slightly larger pool of teams that can win it all. If there are any Nystroms lurking on Penn State’s current schedule, it might not matter.

In the meantime, it’s heady stuff. The talking heads, both those who know their stuff and those who mine for clicks and ratings, are predicting Penn State to at least get one of the four first-round playoff byes, if not be the No. 1 team at the end of the regular season. The primetime game against Oregon could be an atmosphere for the ages; the noon visit to Ohio State a true heavyweight fight. There will be more eyes on this team every week than there has been in decades, at least until it drops a game and maybe even after that. It’s hard to envision the 2026 Lions cratering quite as impressively as the 2000 group did, but the 2025 team will lose a good chunk of its core to the draft, just as the 1999 team did. The new playoff format (and the even larger proposed field) will give Penn State a shot at a title in most years if Franklin is able to win at the same rate he has been, but the shots might not be as good as the one his team has this fall.