Is it gonna be Kalani Sitake? Jeff Brohm? Some shadowy mystery candidate? And whoever it ends up being, will that guy actually have a roster left to coach by the time he gets here? As we all sit on increasingly uncomfortable pins and needles awaiting resolution of Penn State’s marathon head coaching search, the guys ponder whether Pat Kraft ever really had a plan at all and try to tie up some other loose ends that will still have relevance even if someone gets hired before you get a chance to listen.

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Once the calendar flips past Thanksgiving, if you’re one of the fortunate few teams who is at the top of college football’s food chain, you start turning your attention to the playoff.

If you’re not, you start thinking about next season.

All due respect to whatever low-tier bowl game the Nittany Lions might play in after barely defeating Rutgers on Saturday in Piscataway, most Penn State fans are focused on the future, and what an uncertain future it is. So much of what 2026 holds for the program will hinge on who the next head coach is, but the roster makeup just might play a role, too. Though the transfer portal has blurred these lines a bit, college football teams are still largely divided into three distinct groups: The guys who won’t be back next season because they’re out of eligibility and/or going to the league, the guys who will be back next season, and the incoming recruits and transfers.

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The Beaver Stadium crowd chanted for one of their own as he’d just vanquished a fellow Nittany Lion in a battle of Paterno legacies leading hobbled blue bloods. Kaytron Allen became Penn State’s all-time leading rusher. A disappointing team that didn’t give up on their season battled back to within striking distance of bowl eligibility, and at least for a day, the fans had something to celebrate. Without the services of our resident Lettermen, Obligatory’s campus icon and two tackling dummies look back on a fun night that offered a rare bright spot in an otherwise bleak season, and we punch our tickets for the Terry Train before it sails off into the sunset.

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Before Terry Smith returned to Penn State as an assistant coach in 2014, he spent one season as an assistant coach at Temple under Matt Rhule.

The Nittany Lions’ interim coach might have put the final nails in his old boss’s chances of replacing James Franklin with Saturday’s 37-10 romp, while continuing to bolster his own increasingly enticing case in the process.

Rhule, of course, is Pat Kraft’s GUY. They were both at Temple when Rhule led the Owls to back-to-back 10-win seasons, which is the NFL equivalent of leading the Cleveland Browns to two straight AFC North titles. That and his own ties to Penn State and State College were ostensibly enough to keep him on Kraft’s short list even as the Cornhuskers’ promising season began to leak oil and Rhule—like many other coaches who are likely sending Franklin and Jimmy Sexton Christmas cards this year—signed a two-year contract extension to stay in Lincoln through 2032.

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