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EXT. MIDWESTERN FARM/KINNICK STADIUM – NIGHT

RED GRANGE (ghost) walks out of cornfield, stumbles into Kinnick Stadium, watches Penn State and Iowa live…because streaming doesn’t exist in the afterlife. As the clock strikes zero, Grange approaches another legend.

GRANGE

Is this college football hell?

KIRK FERENTZ (shrugging)

It’s Iowa.

Annnd scene…

All kinds of unpredictable stuff happens every week all over the country in college football. Kinnick Stadium at night is a different animal. In one sense, one of the nation’s loudest environments against a top-10 defense is a nightmare venue for a team starting a redshirt freshman quarterback. In another sense, if you’re gonna bounce back from one of the most gut-punching weeks—hell, months—in program history, why not go for broke and play like you have nothing to lose against a team that has made a living off of beating more talented teams with a lot to lose?

The Nittany Lions, with Terry Smith and Ethan Grunkemeyer (and, uhhhhh, Jaxon Smolik) leading the way rather than James Franklin and Drew Allar, played mostly like they had nothing to lose in Saturday’s 25-24 loss to the Hawkeyes, using turnovers and the churning legs of Kaytron Allen to hang around until the final minutes, when Grunkemeyer’s inexperience and Andy Kotelnicki’s, um, familiar habits stalled the offense.

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It’s an argument that can be applied to all sorts of life situations but was ready-made for football coaches:

Do you go with the devil you know, or the devil you don’t?

Penn State fans had been going around and around with this one for a few years before this season and the fateful three-week stretch that sealed James Franklin’s fate. On the one side, you had the optimists, who felt Franklin was pushing the program ever closer to the top of the summit, one that was more easily accessible with the expanded playoff format, and that maybe they were a player or a coordinator or a fat donation away. On the other, the fans who had long since made up their mind about the — and they never tired of using this term — “used-car salesman” whose tendency to come up short in big games was about a sure a thing as there was in sports. Give them someone else — anyone else.

I guess now we’ll find out one way or the other, right?

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