Sunday Column: Want to Enjoy the Penn State Football Experience More in 2024? Start by Adjusting Your Expectations

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.”

At Penn State, James Franklin put together another 10-win season, the program’s fifth in the last eight years, and that, too, was regarded as a disappointing season in State College. And once again, the root of that disappointment lies in unmet expectations.

Let’s take a good, hard, honest look at how the Nittany Lions came to inherit those expectations, though, and whether they were actually appropriate for not only this season but for Penn State’s relative standing in college football over the last few decades.

The program’s last national title came in 1986. Its last unbeaten season came in 1994, which was also the last time it had a legitimate case for a national crown. In 31 seasons as a member of the Big Ten conference, Penn State has won four Big Ten championships, just one since 2008.

If you’re reading this, you’re advanced enough of a Penn State fan that you know all of this, but it’s also very likely you’re one of the many people who expected more than this team was able to deliver this fall.

My question is, based on what?

Penn State has not been an elite program since the 1980s. We can talk for days about the reasons for that—a legendary coach staying too long and not doing the proper upkeep, a relatively persistent inability to beat the two bullies in the conference, a financial and resources commitment that doesn’t match the size and pockets of the alumni base, a bout with NCAA sanctions that didn’t cripple the program quite as much as many predicted but was nonetheless a massive blow—but it is a sentence worth repeating. If you want to put too fine of a point on it, if Marcus Allen misses a field goal block by a few inches—even if the field goal itself missed—against Ohio State in 2016, Penn State’s conference title drought would be at 15 years and counting.

So why, then, are fans who know the program inside and out so miffed that this season didn’t end the way Michigan’s did, or even the way Alabama’s did? The Nittany Lions, by all the recruiting rankings, have fielded top-15, maybe top-12 talent over the past few seasons, and they’ll once again send their fair share of players to the NFL this spring, but they’re still not recruiting at a championship level. And yes, they’re playing the part of the windshield a lot more often than the part of the bug in a Big Ten that is becoming increasingly top-heavy, but they still lag behind Ohio State and Michigan in terms of talent, resources, and reputation.

If you look at the results of the 2023 season at face value—losses to Ohio State, Michigan and Ole Miss that weren’t very competitive (yes, the team that faced Ole Miss barely resembled a full-strength Penn State, but the team that took the field was kind of a mess) and wins that had all the sizzle of a bowl of cold oatmeal—there isn’t much to celebrate. But the caliber of team that Penn State had this season—a fantastic (if maybe slightly overrated?) defense, an offense rife with talent at all but a couple of positions and with execution issues to spare, and a group of special teams that was solid across the board—was pretty damned impressive if you consider the factors in the previous paragraph. Franklin took a lot of heat for coming up short in the big games, but he overdelivered in more cases than he underdelivered this season and in most of the decade he’s been here, provided you shut your eyes and avoiding looking at the 2020-21 disaster stretch.

That Franklin has had the Nittany Lions winning and recruiting at levels as good or better than they’ve managed in every period since that Fiesta Bowl win over Miami is what has raised the expectations of fans, media and probably the team itself, but to extend them beyond what he and the team have actually accomplished, and what Penn State is capable of accomplishing given its current collection of talent and resources is, while understandable, also a recipe for perennial disappointment.

Perhaps a better tactic for Penn State fans as we head into an intriguing season for college football is focusing less on expectations and more on hope. Hope that the offense can figure out how to throw the football again. Hope that the defense can continue a strong run even without Manny Diaz. Hope that Franklin takes his hand off the e-brake in one of these marquee games. Hope that Penn State’s NIL levels help push the recruiting into the next level. Hope that the Bamas and Ohio States take a step back and that the Nittany Lions are one of the programs to step up and take their place.

Expecting a program to reach a summit it has already reached is a lot of pressure, and DeBoer will feel it immediately if he hasn’t already. Expecting a program to reach a level it hasn’t reached in nearly 40 years is a different matter entirely, and Penn State fans would be well to remember that, even if it isn’t much fun to be reminded of.