TERRY! TERRY! After Downing His Old Boss, Did Interim HC Smith Do Enough To Become The New Boss?

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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.

But maybe the next guy is already in the building. Don’t look now, but the Lions have won two straight and can clinch bowl eligibility with a win at Rutgers next week. And while there are plenty of micro reasons for that—a much more poised Ethan Grunkemeyer, the resurgences of Dani Dennis-Sutton and Zane Durant and a whole buncha Kaytron Allen and Nick Singleton touches—the macro reason is that Penn State, finally, is playing both inspired and organized football, and you have to give Smith credit for that.

The question is, should you give him a promotion, too?

There are boxes that a head coach who is going to lead an elite college football program—or one that so badly aspires to be elite—must check, including recruiting chops, the ability to build and coordinate a talented staff, and the leadership skills to establish a culture of accountability and discipline that values the collective over the individual. (A track record of winning big games helps, too).

Those are all non-negotiables, as is a sound strategy for the metaphorical Rubik’s Cube that NIL management has become. But there are some other boxes, too, especially for a program that is so steeped in tradition and still healing from some old wounds.

If Rhule is Kraft’s guy, Smith is a Penn State guy, through and through. He was a stud receiver here. His stepson, Justin King, was a stud corner (slash receiver) here. He knows how to recruit the state in a way that maybe no one else does. He’s beloved by the current players, by the lettermen, by everyone who has ever come across him. Want to build a bridge between Penn State’s proud but complicated past and its promising but uncertain future? Smith, who wore a pin that went “409” across and “JOE” down on Saturday, knows every inch of the ground, where to find the materials and, as he’s proven in recent weeks, how to organize a crew.

It says here the Lions were still a few steps behind Ohio State this season, and though the Oregon game (with Drew Allar) and the Indiana game (without Allar) were basically both coin flips, this team was probably closer to a top-12 program than the top-3 squad it was touted as for most of the summer and the non-conference season. But this team never should have lost to UCLA, or even to Northwestern, for that matter. It was, for one reason or several others, a hot buttered mess under Franklin, who for so much of his 12 years here had eliminated most of the things that cause messes in other programs. By contrast, under Smith, the offense is leaning on its two best players—the school’s all-time leading rusher and one of its two leading touchdown scorers—more often and, thankfully, running fewer gimmick plays. The defense is playing with more edge and more confidence as it learns the finer points of Jim Knowles’ scheme. There is an energy on the sideline that just wasn’t there, even during wins, in the early part of the season.

That energy is extending beyond the field, too. To the stands, where chants of “Terry” rung through Beaver Stadium Saturday. To the TV studio, where former QB Michael Robinson endorsed a man he’d never played for. There’s a buzz here, and it’s growing louder at a time when recruits are looking south to Blacksburg and the talk of another playoff run fades further from memory.

On paper, Smith is a long shot. He’s never been a head coach at the college level, nor a coordinator. Any learning curve about the Pennsylvania recruiting landscape or the nuances of a small town that becomes an overflowing city seven Saturdays a year that an outsider would go through pales in comparison to the learning curve Smith would face when it came to sitting in the big chair, building a staff, schmoozing would-be donors. Franklin had his flaws, to be sure, but he fits the CEO mold as well as anyone in the game, and though you could see Smith doing all of those things, he hasn’t done them yet, and many of the other names on Kraft’s constantly growing and shrinking list have. He’ll also be 57 when the 2026 season begins, which is not old for the job (especially not here) but isn’t young, either.

There’s a big difference between taking down a Nebraska team without its starting quarterback and basically any team that Ryan Day brings to town, though. Smith, even if he would be able to retain a few dozen more current players than any other candidate, would need lots of help, and his success would hinge on not only what sort of coaching staff he could put together but also his program’s NIL coffers. Buzz is important in college football. Players who will go to war under any conditions for you are, too. But it’s also a sport where the margins matter, and Smith might not have the time to grow into the CEO type of leader that Penn State likely needs.

Or maybe he’s the leader they do need already.