Sunday Column: Despite The Grumbles of Some,’Good’ Should Never Be The Enemy of ‘Great’ for Penn State

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.

Penn State is in that class, as it showed in three phases of the game against the floundering Terrapins, for a few reasons, and chief among them is overall talent. James Franklin’s recruiting from both the high school ranks and transfer portal is as good as it has been, and you can almost hear Daniel Jeremiah’s voice breaking down the plays you’re seeing from the likes of Adisa Isaac and Abdul Carter and Kaytron Allen and Drew Allar during future NFL Draft coverage.

The other big reason is coaching (stay with me here, gang). The defense we saw against Maryland was aggressive and dominant (if a little handsy) and it could be so because its players were fundamentally sound, in outstanding physical condition and prepared for the Terrapins’ offense. The offense was effective because Allar’s mechanics were on point, he had clean pockets and his receivers were able to exploit giant holes in Maryland’s secondary. All of that is what happens when talent is coached up, and Franklin and his assistants probably do not get enough credit for that most weeks.

What has made the Michigan and Ohio State contests so maddening for, well, everyone, fans and coaches and players alike, is that while the talent gap between Penn State and those programs has closed (and at the same time, the gap between Penn State and the rest of the conference widened), the results have not followed suit. The execution has not been on the same level in those games, and whether that’s down to coaching or game-planning or players coming up short in big spots is up for debate at almost every position on the field and in the end, is the difference between two teams being in one class and Penn State being in another.

The thing is, even if next week is another in a long line of wasted chances to join that upper crust, it’s a very good time for Penn State to be positioned in that next group. Why? Because the Big Ten and the CFP are both about to change in a very big way. The Nittany Lions will play Ohio State next fall but they won’t play Michigan. They will, however, play geographically curious Big Ten members UCLA, USC and Washington.

The basic math equation for Penn State these last several years – beat either Michigan or Ohio State or both to get into a four-team playoff – will become filled with numerous additional variables. Can you lose to Ohio State but beat the California teams and Washington and get in? Can you afford an extra loss on schedules that suddenly only include half of the two opponents that have been giving you such fits every year and still make an expanded playoff field? Will the stranglehold that the Buckeyes and Wolverines have had on the conference be weakened by the addition of those teams plus Oregon (plus whatever wrath the NCAA might decide to rain down upon Ann Arbor)?

It’s intriguing stuff for even the casual college football fan. And it’s even more intriguing for a Penn State team that is loaded with talent and will be even after it loses a good chunk of that talent to the NFL during the next couple of springs. Perhaps the best way of slaying the Big Ten’s oldest and scaliest dragons is simply avoiding them altogether, and letting someone else worry about them. There will be new monsters to slay, and maybe what hasn’t worked against those dragons will work against them.

In any event, yeah, 10-2 isn’t ideal right now, especially when you consider who is involved in the two each year. But 10-2 could mean something very different for the Nittany Lions in the days to come, so don’t turn your nose up at it now. Not when there are so many other run-of-the-mill programs out there that Penn State could easily be but simply isn’t.

Just remember that next week.