Sponsor: For The Blogy’s offseason 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.

Admit it, Penn State fans — part of you will miss Jim Harbaugh.

Perhaps no other modern coach, at any level of any sport, is as histrionic along the gameday sideline or as unabashedly corny/arrogant with the media. It’s awful to watch your team lose to his, and see the smirks and fist pumps that are the spoils of victory, but it makes it that much sweeter when your team beats his and you can see the scowl and misery on his face.

The other parts of you, and the rest of the Big Ten, won’t miss the former Michigan coach, who led his team to a natty this season when he wasn’t serving suspensions for recruiting violations … and sign-stealing and is now back in the NFL with the Chargers. Harbaugh’s departure is only one of several big changes to the Big Ten in 2024, but many of those changes could be taken advantage of by James Franklin’s Nittany Lions.

Continue reading

The “alignment” between the Penn State football program and the athletic and university administrations James Franklin has so often talked about during the past couple of years, it would seem, is yielding some tangible results.

Reporting this week by Ben Jones at StateCollege.com showed that the Nittany Lions’ recruiting budget more than doubled over the past year, up to $2.8 million, a figure that would put a program that has perennially finished in the nation’s top 15 in recruiting rankings most years under Franklin among the five best in the nation in recruiting spending, which entails many things but was defined by the fiscal year report as costs of transportation, lodging and meals for recruits, costs of transportation for staff (including private aircraft), plus phone charges, postage, “and such.”

Continue reading

Kalen DeBoer just reached the college football coaching summit.

After leading Washington to the national championship game, DeBoer will succeed Nick Saban at Alabama, where he will have a returning roster loaded with Sunday talent, facilities and resources that most coaches could only dream about, and arguably the most prominent brand in college athletics. It’s hard to think of any better situations. And yet, it will probably be the hardest job in the sport for at least the next few years.

Why? Because of the staggering expectations.

The Crimson Tide just wrapped up another 12-win season and reached the playoff for the eighth time in the 10 seasons of that format. And somehow, because of the impossibly high bar Saban set, that qualifies as a disappointing season in Tuscaloosa. DeBoer won’t get much if any time to adjust to the rigors of playing in the SEC each week or the recruiting battles against Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Bama’s other peers. He will be expected to deliver, and at Bama, for the better part of the last two decades, “deliver” has meant “win national titles.”

Continue reading

Imagine if the rest of life worked the way the transfer portal has now given coaches and schools a second chance to land the big recruit fish they missed out on the first time around.

You ask your dream girl to prom, only to watch her go with your high school nemesis instead … and then she spends a week at the beach with you after graduation.

You don’t get the job after nailing all of the interviews, wind up taking a position you’re just OK with at another company … and then the first company calls back six months later and offers you the position you interviewed for but with better benefits.

You get out-bid for the house you (but mostly your wife) really, really wanted … and then the new buyer backs out at the last minute and the seller calls you instead of putting the house back on the market.

Continue reading

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.

Welp, the highly-anticipated season finale and last unchecked NY6 bowl win “box” on Penn State’s program checklist was a tough watch. No way around it. Season-long themes remained true: out of sync, stagnancy that produced little to no explosive offense. It’s also worth noting that PSU was missing some of their top players.  Negatives aside, let’s take a look at one of, if not the only, exciting offensive play of the afternoon.

Fun.

Continue reading