Somewhere, Joe Paterno and Bo Schembechler were watching and smiling (somewhere in the more earthly realm, Jim Harbaugh was watching, too, but probably not smiling). The BIG NOON matchup between Penn State and fellow top 10 team Michigan was a classic throwback. Your run game vs. my defense. My run game vs. your defense. Pass? Are you nuts? This isn’t a basketball game.

For three quarters and change, James Franklin had decided to take the ball out of his sophomore quarterback’s hands (his feet were another story) and try to beat the Wolverines in the old-school way. And for three quarters and change, his defense and his run game were at least giving the Nittany Lions a chance to do that, and in the process steal that desperately sought win over one of the league’s two bullies.

There were two problems with this plan, though, and both of them proved fatal in the guts of the game. The first was that Michigan is, well, built for this, both in terms of physical construction and philosophy. Penn State is built for … well, we’re still not sure, and that’s a problem that transcended this game. The second was that Michigan held the lead, held the high ground, and that enabled the Wolverines, even with one of the nation’s most efficient quarterbacks at their disposal, to call 33(!!) consecutive run plays on offense and, on defense, force Penn State to try this wild and crazy strategy of throwing the football and catching it.

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As controversy swirls around the mighty Michigan juggernaut, Penn State can play the role of avenging vigilante while defying the odds and expectations to save its season.

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Everyone has given up.

Perhaps, like many of your fellow Penn Staters and practically all of the national commentariat, you threw your hands up in disgust as the listless Nittany Lions were pushed around the field in Columbus a few weeks ago and wrote the rest of the season off then and there, resigned to another year of being “great, but not elite.” Maybe you shook off the Ohio State doldrums and held fast to the lingering hope that another shot at a top-four opponent, no matter how daunting the foe, held the potential to revitalize a season full of promise.

Regardless, precious few among even Penn State’s most devoted followers, and practically no one outside the borders of Nittany Nation, holds a rational belief that the home team will triumph this weekend. The prevailing sentiment among our fanbase seems to be an acceptance that PSU missed its best shot at besting the Buckeyes in at least a decade and now faces a far stiffer test against a team that throttled the Lions last season (except in the Smuckers & Skippy-scented halftime tunnel) and boasts a long and brutal history of torturing Penn State in ways both subtle and gross. Those who profess a belief that Penn State will win the game rely heavily on the sort of blind faith that makes sports fandom beautiful.

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When it comes to ‘creativity’ in football, beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder but rather in the end result of the trick play

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You know, creativity is a funny thing.

As an offensive coordinator when it “works” but doesn’t (See: KeAndre Lambert-Smith’s perfecetly-schemed 2^nd quarter incompletion on Saturday) you’re an overpaid doofus in the Cro-Magnon minds of a frothing, irascible (Word of the Day calendar entry: December 14, 2021) fanbase.

But when the rabbit you pull from your team-issued ballcap “doesn’t work” yet somehow bunny hops along a twisted, unintended, round-about route and serendipitously (April 24, 2019)  winds up at the desired destination – thanks to your QB’s quick-thinking, spot-on Steve Nash impersonation — you’re  suddenlythe bearded belle of the ball worthy of ALL the Twitter/X flowers, adoration, gold-star stickers, and get first pick from the toy box during indoor recess!

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Take a quick look at Big Ten scores from Saturday, Penn State fans. Indiana beat Wisconsin. Michigan State beat Nebraska. Illinois topped Minnesota.

If you’re one of those dyed-in the-wool Nittany Lion fans who are predicting a 10-2 finish for this team and have been ever since the loss in Columbus and maybe even before that, and you’re bitter about Penn State not being able to win the games that really matter even if they flex their collective muscle in those other 10 games (see Saturday’s 51-15 pasting of Maryland), well, there isn’t much I can say here that will change your mind.

But it probably needs to be said, before Penn State plays the other of its two season-deciding games a week from now in Beaver Stadium, that what the Nittany Lions do in those “other” Big Ten games matters, both now and certainly moving forward.

The Nittany Lions are still not in the top class of the conference, where the Buckeyes continue to grind out wins and the Wolverines, while enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous cheating accusations, continue to just grind teams to pulp. But they are in a class by themselves just below that class and above the rest of the conference, where it’s a lot of closely contested if not brilliantly played football most weeks, where a game like Iowa’s 10-7 win over Northwestern is not nearly the outlier it should be.

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After five drama-filled, tumultuous, ‘Behind The Music’ years, apart Mike Locksley and Josh Gattis finally decided to get the band back together!

Flashback to 2018. The setting: Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Tua Tagovailoa is the quarterback for the Crimson Tide, Najee Harris is their third-best running back, DeVonta Smith is their fifth receiver and they have five different defenders with double-digit TFL — one of whom is named Quinnen Williams. That’s, like, a lot of talent on one roster — enough talent to (checks Wikipedia) lose by 4 touchdowns in the national title game to then-ACC bully Clemson?!? Hmm.

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Closing in on the backend of a “two-game season,” Penn State can rewrite or reinforce the emerging narrative about the team versus the Terrapins.

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Did we just witness a turning point in Penn State football history?

Some readers seemed to really enjoy my slipping in a reference to simulation theory at the very end of last week’s column, so let’s start things out this time around with another popular artifact of theoretical physics for the everyman and invoke the concept of many worlds: Somewhere in the multiverse, there is a timeline where the closing sequence of last week’s Indiana game is destined for enshrinement in program lore.

Back in Beaver Stadium a week removed from a devastating loss to Ohio State in Columbus that all but crushed their playoff hopes and touched off a week of national criticism, the Nittany Lions led lowly Indiana by only three points late in the game. After setting an NCAA record with the most passing attempts prior to throwing his first interception, Drew Allar appeared to bury his struggling team by finding the worst possible moment, at the worst part of the field, against the worst possible opponent to toss that fateful pick.

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Way back in the day when I was a bright-eyed undergrad at a little school in State College, I got into the terrible habit of waiting until the last second to start projects…a procrastinator, as it’s commonly known.

Thankfully, it only took three Testing Hall panic attacks (third time’s the charm!) to crystalize the lesson my mom spent 17 years trying to drill into my brain: Work, THEN play.

While that advice eventually ushered me across the stage and got me this swell piece of paper with my name on it, turns out Mom was dead wrong…at least when it came to scouting this Jekyll-and-Hyde, Sweet-Then-Sour, Caterpillar-Turned-Butterfly-But-In-Reverse Maryland football team.

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