James Franklin got his guy. He’d had his eye on this Big 12 offensive coordinator for quite some time and had admired his work at multiple programs. Penn State’s head coach had decided his own offense needed a change, and this coach, Franklin decided, had the experience directing potent, explosive offenses that would translate to helping shove the Nittany Lions over that steep, elusive mountain peak separating good from great. The hire was widely praised and another example of Franklin’s enduring ability to recruit not only top players but sought-after coaches as well.

That guy, of course, was Mike Yurcich.

Three years later, Franklin made another change, and the Big 12 OC this time around is Andy Kotelnicki, from Kansas by way of Buffalo and the University of Mary, which is a real school in Division II. Once again, the credentials are impressive. Once again, the stakes are high, and once again, there is moldable talent in the barn, even if it appears the offensive line is headed for yet another rebuild.

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Best for last, right? Penn State’s regular-season finale included explosive runs, explosive passes, and jussssst enough competency on offense for the fanbase rightly laud the substitute-teaching job conducted by Co-OC’s Ja’Juan Seider and Ty Howle. Heck, a few brazen message board warriors pounded their dust/crumb infested keyboards asking for Penn State head coach James Franklin to consider an internal promotion of Seider or Howle (or both…because we still aren’t sure who was actually calling the plays).

Not to be all Debbie Downer, but for what it’s worth, every concept PSU ran this past Saturday Friday had been called dozens of times during the  mostly-forgettable Mike Yurcich era.

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Sometimes marketing slogans wind up being just a bit too on the nose.

For the last few years, we’ve been told, if only by promotional materials, that Penn State was “unrivaled” but it was only during the 2023 season, perhaps, that this was actually true.

The Nittany Lions, you see, spent essentially the entire season playing only against themselves. In the 10 wins, including Friday’s ho-hum, 42-0 defeat of a tired-looking group of Michigan State Spartans in Detroit, they were almost always in command, thanks to an incredible defense and an overall talent advantage on offense that mitigated most of their discombobulation on that side of the ball. They were trying to win the game, but because those games were essentially in hand before they even started, they were really trying to reach a standard that they never quite found.

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For the second time since joining the Big Ten, Penn State will see its manufactured rivalry with Michigan State interrupted by conference expansion.

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For longtime fans who remember Penn State football’s roots as an Eastern independent, the program’s place in the Big Ten has always felt a little awkward. But 2023 marked the Nittany Lions’ 30^th season of conference competition, meaning full generations of Lions loyalists have grown up knowing nothing but B1G membership for their beloved Blue and White. For most of that time, fans young and old could count on two things at season’s end: Michigan State and freezing cold. Starting last season and looking ahead, however, while the weather will be lousy as ever, the opponent will be different. Penn State’s annual season-ending matchup with the Spartans, which was conceived out of the evolving conference landscape, has now become a victim of it.

Yet through most of State’s years in the Big Ten, Sparty loomed as the final obstacle to overcome, a gatekeeper guarding the path toward regular season glory, bowl position, and occasionally, a conference championship. In spite of this seemingly prime position on each’s year slate, the series never managed to generate much enmity on either side. Over nearly three decades, fans of both teams certainly grew accustomed to seeing one another at season’s end, but this familiarity never bred much in the way of contempt. Other opponents, notably Michigan and Ohio State, generated more publicity and hate, and neither teams’ players nor their fans ever circled late November on the calendar. Bona fide rivalries in college football are funny things, and if 22 (soon to be 23) season finales between Michigan State and Penn State can teach us anything, it’s that they cannot be engineered.

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Philosophy

Something Old: Other than posing with dogs in social media promotional posts, departed Michigan State head coach Mel Tucker’s whole thing was being “multiple.” By that, we mean he didn’t want to give defenses hints on how to handle his squad by conforming to an established offensive identity. Instead, Tucker’s Spartans amalgamated the concepts that fit best with their personnel from various schools of offensive thought. He wanted to make prepping for Michigan State feel like taking a class with eight different textbooks.

Your scheme is largely shaped by the archetype of players you’ve spent the past half-decade recruiting — or maybe that’s a “chicken and the egg” scenario. Firing a coach in-season doesn’t reinvent your team’s identity, although I’d say they’ve stripped the majority of the offense down to the classic “spread-option.”

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Raise a toast, or pour one out, for the end of an era.

This Friday’s climate-controlled tussle for “A giant, rectangular piece of wood with some stuff on it,” marks the 23^rd time – and potentially final time — that the manufactured Penn State-Michigan State rivalry will punctuate the regular season for both programs.

While this series has arguably been the most unpredictable, unsettling, and downright wacky of any since the Nittany Lions pushed the Big Ten to 11 in 1993, this season’s Spartans appear to be a soft, checked-out opponent to finish strong against and bank some last-minute style points…style points that should lock down a NY6 invitation to hang with the Chick-fil-A cows in Atlanta or the dancing VRBO Excessive Cleaning Fees (just a bunch of guys wearing wine-stained carpet mascot outfits) in Glendale, Arizona.

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Penn State’s newly-elevated play-calling Orthrus wasted no time putting the Scarlet Knights on notice that they’d have to respect Beau Pribula as a runner.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Despite our unrealistic hopes and dreams, Coach Seider and Coach Howle’s first career game as co-playcallers, the offense was kept pretty vanilla. Bummer.

Although a lot of us hoped they would reinvent the wheel in their 6 days as interim lever-pullers of the Nittany Lion offense, the risk of coloring too outside the lines against an inferior opponent and jeopardizing Penn State’s shot at a NY6 by playing too fast and loose far outweighed the reward of showing potential employers how cute and clever they can be when picking plays off a laminated sheet.

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