Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2023 football coverage is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

While it’s impossible to place the entire blame for Saturday’s kick-in-the-shins performance against Ohio State on one person or thing, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that a better 3^rd-down showing (like even a D+ showing) might have made the difference in a one-score game. In situations that required a singular yard, specifically, the Nittany Lions repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with a mix of mental and physical errors.

Tomorrow, Coach Codutti will cycle through all 16 Penn State 3^rd-down scenarios in his weekly Film Study, but since we’re gluttons for pain, here’s a small taste before the main course arrives late Monday night.

Sigh

Hold your nose. Here we go.

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The final drive was the hardest to watch.

You could argue that any of the previous six second-half possessions by what passed for Penn State’s offense Saturday, which added up to — trigger warning — 36 yards in 25 plays, would have been the toughest to watch, as they collectively built on a string of ineptitude previously not seen from the 2023 team, and, really, not even any offense in the James Franklin Era, with the possible exception of the time Christian Hackenberg was sacked approximately 316 times in the loss at Temple in 2015.

But the final, pre-onside kick drive, when Drew Allar actually connected with a few receivers for decent gains, including the dart to Kaden Saunders on a broken play for the Lions’ only touchdown of the day, was more painful still, because it reminded you that Penn State wasn’t completely bereft of talent, as all of its other offensive possessions that day had so strongly suggested. It reminded you that Allar had, in fact, completed passes before and is likely to do so again, that his linemen provided him with some time to do so and his receivers were physically capable of hauling those passes in.

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More than a decade of nearly uninterrupted futility makes victory in Columbus feel out of reach, but Penn Staters should dare to imagine a bigger picture.

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This column aspires to frame a “travel narrative” around the journey of Penn State’s 2023 football season, a chronicle of the Nittany Lions’ path toward their destination parceled out over 12 – plus three?? – installments (we won’t count the Bye week’s digression about scheduling Pitt).

For the most ardent enthusiasts of college football, one of its most beautiful aspects is the way in which the seven-day cycles linking each game day to the next take on their own character. The previous week’s result, the upcoming opponent, and the many tempests in the internet teapot that suddenly bubble up (and disappear just as quickly) combine to imbue each successive week with a unique flavor. Already this year, we’ve had enough James Franklin press conference gems to fill an entire season, not to mention the student section service dog (what a good boy!).

We remember the outcomes, but often the events between kickoffs become just as much as part of the story. Taken together, they help us mark the passage of time in our lives.

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Sponsor: For The Blogy’s 2023 football coverage is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

Ladies and gentlemen, our long regional nightmare is over. Penn State tight end Theo Johnson finally got in the endzone for the first (and second!) time in 2023. Strike up the band! Plan the parade! Mint the commemorative coins!

In all seriousness, after spending the first half of the season doing dirty work in the trenches and getting unlucky in substitution patterns that have given his counterpart, Tyler Warren, some cupcake TDs, it was nice to see the senior captain from Canada cross the goal line – and, more importantly, haul-in a deep, downfield target.

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The nothingburger of the week was made from James Franklin’s comments on the way an unnamed conference opponent (rhymes with “Witch again”) schedules, er, less than staunch non-conference opponents. A few media outlets twisted the remarks to make it seem as though the Penn State coach was taking a shot at, um, the Jewel Vereens, when in fact Franklin was actually complimenting the program for a strategy he has used consistently since he arrived nine years ago.

Which brings us to Saturday’s game against the fighting Minutemen of Massachusetts, who put up about the resistance most expected (almost none) in a 63-0 loss to the Nittany Lions. When Penn State put this game on the schedule in January 2019, UMass had been an FBS program for only five seasons and had won a total of 16 games in that time period. Since that time, the Minutemen are 4-44, including Saturday’s loss.

In a brief and half-hearted defense of Franklin, and the coach he wasn’t taking a shot at, and basically the heads of all Power 5 programs, I get it. There is no point in going out of your way to schedule difficult non-conference games if A) Everyone else is doing it and B) Your conference schedule has the juice to get you to a playoff on its own.

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Among a slew of comfortable, forgettable wins against schools from Indiana, many Big Ten-era Homecoming games have found their way into Penn State history.

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For those fortunate few who call Happy Valley home, the rhythm of life – whether you like it or not – inevitably attunes to the ebb and flow of the campus calendar. As someone who very intentionally chose to take root in a college town, I love it.  There are two times of the year in particular – Commencement and Homecoming – that cause me to reflect on how my experience differs from most.

In mid-May, as I watch young graduates who’ve come to the end of their four(-ish) years in the Nittany Valley pack up whatever contents of their apartments won’t be left out on the curb and drive off toward whatever’s next, I always think to myself, “I wonder what that’s like.”

You see, many moons ago, I took a course taught by Steve Manuel, who some alums may remember from his teaching, and many football fans will recognize, even if they don’t realize it, from his years’ worth of game day photography, as featured by The Football Letter among others. Steve is a Marine. Smart, no-nonsense guy; good sense of humor, loves Penn State. In class, he told us Happy Valley was “the Good Ship Lollipop,” a fantasy land largely divorced from the harsh realities of the outside world. He drew the contrast to be instructive and always with an air of cynicism, but I also detected (or imagined I did) a hint of affection accompanying it.

It got me thinking. “If you find yourself lucky enough to be a passenger on the Good Ship Lollipop, maybe the savvy move is to just never disembark.” And so here I am, over 20 years later, and happy as a pig in slop.

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