The worst-kept secret in college football is that there are the haves, and the have-nots, and that the gap between them seems more likely to expand than to contract.

One of the teams in Michigan Stadium moved a step closer toward cementing itself as a “have” on Saturday. The other left little doubt that, at least for the time being, it remains in the other category.

Penn State lost 41-17 to Michigan and the game was not that close. Read that sentence again for emphasis. The Nittany Lions won the turnover battle, did not give the ball away, and converted all of their red-zone opportunities — all key parts of the formula that had led to their 5-0 start.

And none of it mattered.

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• Perhaps we’ve reached the ACCEPTANCE stage of grief, because we’re all out of spittle, all out of veins bulging from our angry foreheads, all out of cuss words, all out of pillows to scream into, all out of reasons to let this forever-good/never-“ELITE” program ruin our afternoon. THIS IS PENN STATE FOOTBALL…a cockroach that feasts in the comfortable obscurity of also-ran BTN/ESPN 2 broadcasts, but scatters and disappears when the bright lights flip on. It’s one thing to lose to Michigan on the road. It’s quite another to have Joel Klatt twist the knife by saying, “I don’t know how this game could have been any closer than (41-17)?” That comment stings worse than rubbing alcohol on a knee scrape because it’s 100 percent accurate. For two programs that recruit and sign the same caliber of player, this was Varsity vs. JV, at best.

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From Last Year To This Year, Penn State Has Made Substantial Gains in the Run Game. But Why? What’s Changed? What’s Different?

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We’ve all heard/read the dreadful numbers, but for the sake of posterity, here they are again: Last year, the Penn State Nittany Lions managed only 107.8 rushing yards/game. That ranked 13th in the 14-team B1G.

This year, the run plays on Mike Yurcich’s laminated card have yielded much better results on the ground. Roughly midway through the season, Penn State sits solidly in the middle of the conference pack in most rushing metrics. “We Are” clipping along with 192.6 rushing yards/game (5th) and — excluding kneel-downs — 5.2 Y/C (t-4th). For reference, even in the Wondrous Saquon Days Penn State never got higher than 6th in the B1G in rushing yards.

So, we pondered, to what do we owe this dramatic turn-around on the ground in 2022?

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The season starts on Saturday.

Yes, I know five Penn State games have already been played this season. I watched them all and have decent memories of doing so. Like you, I watched Nick Singleton explode into the national consciousness, Manny Diaz smother out-matched offenses with guile and aggression, and Sean Clifford … do what Sean Clifford does. I watched a team of Nittany Lions that looked, at times, very much like the .500ish group of the last two years and, at others, like a legitimate conference contender.

All of that was prelude. The only way that any of those games would have truly mattered is if Penn State had lost any of them. But they did not, so that they wiped out Auburn by more than most would have anticipated and subdued Central Michigan and Northwestern by a lot less than anticipated (not even Vegas can adequately predict which version of this team will show up on any given week), means the same as if they had defeated all five opponents 42-0 or 7-3.

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Introduction

Chips are for cookies. Chips are for dip. Chips are for overheating inside my outdated iPhone the millisecond Apple releases a new iteration (I’m onto your little scheme, Bono).

The object fastened to Penn State defensive coordinator Manny Diaz’s shoulder this season isn’t a chip – it’s a damn boulder. Sedimentary? Igneous? Metamorphic? Who knows, and honestly, who cares. All that matters is that the jilted former head coach (seriously, have you read the details of his ugly estrangement with Miami??!?!) is pulling levers and pushing buttons with an edge capable of cutting diamonds after administrators snatched away Diaz’s dream job and hired an overpaid replacement who Aqib Talib’d his Turnover Chain and tossed it in the trash.

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Introduction

Calling the weather conditions during Saturday’s Penn State-Northwestern game ‘miserable’ would be a disservice to what those scattered poncho’d warriors endured inside Beaver Stadium. The steadiness and intensity of the rain – the dying, damp breathes of Hurricane Ian — was apparent through my TV (except when baseball came on and the screen size shrunk by 80%) and it absolutely looked like a place I wouldn’t want to be. But, sitting in my living room in Houston, Texas where the weather outside was 85 degrees and sunny didn’t feel much better. Not after that performance. The turnovers and sloppy offensive play made us all feel like we were sitting in a cold, heavy rain all day – even if only figuratively. Now, the silver lining is that the Nittany Lions managed to win the game. And, at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters in any given week. Penn State enters the bye week fairly healthy and with a 5-0 record. Still, like the weather Saturday, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows around Happy Valley, so let’s reflect on the ups and downs of the Nits’ 10-point escape vs. the Wildcats. Off we go…

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Lip reading is an inexact science. But if you looked closely at Pat Fitzgerald during the telecast of Saturday’s game, it sure looked like Northwestern’s head coach was saying, “They’re going to have to play the whole game today” following the Wildcat touchdown that cut the Penn State lead to 14-7 with 2:10 left in the third quarter.

Indeed, the Nittany Lions had not really had to play four quarters of football since the opener at Purdue, having taken care of business early, to varying degrees, against Ohio, Auburn, and Central Michigan. And until a few minutes earlier, just before Jacob Gill’s 47-yard touchdown reception, Penn State appeared to have done enough to put this one to bed on the miserable sort of rainy November afternoon that arrived in State College on the first day of October.

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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).

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