What’s left to say?
The Twilight Zone season that is for the Penn State football team gets more and more bizarre with each passing week.
Saturday’s 27-24 loss to Indiana wasn’t the surprise. The surprise was that the Hoosiers, the second-ranked team in the College Football Playoff poll, only won by a field goal. It took a miracle play in the end zone to give Indiana the lead for good, even though the clock had ticked down to 39 seconds left to play in the game in Happy Valley.
This was a game that Penn State was used to winning. But ever since Homecoming 2025, the prevailing winds have been blowing gale force throughout University Park and, indeed, all of Nittany Nation.
There’s nothing by comparison to the tumultuous 2011 season that saw Joe Paterno being fired over the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Yet, one season removed, under the leadership of Bill O’Brien, the Nittany Lions finished 8-4. O’Brien accepted an NFL job after the 2013 season, and the next season James Franklin took over.
Fast forward to 2024. Penn State was tied with Notre Dame 24-24 with seconds winding down in the College Football Playoff semifinals in early January. However, a Drew Allar ill-advised pass was intercepted. Field goal good. Nittany Lions lose 27-24. Ohio State wins the CFP championship a week and a half later.
Allar, Franklin’s golden child who succeeded Sean Clifford and kept Beau Pribula on the sidelines, had decent success but his biggest mistakes came on the biggest stage. He threw a game-ending interception during a 30-24 double overtime loss to Oregon on Sept. 27 that began a now six-game losing streak.
By then, Humpty Dumpty was already off the wall. It was only a matter of time for the Franklin Era to end.
Franklin, in his own right, contributed to a Renaissance in the football program. During the next 11 seasons, Penn State suffered through one losing season, one ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly wiped out the season. The Nittany Lions finished 4-5.
Even after winning the Big Ten Championship in 2016 and securing three 11-win seasons during a four-season stretch (2016-2019), the whispers were no longer whispers, especially after another loss to a Top 10 team.
If you aren’t familiar with Penn State’s football history, there are many more wins than losses. The Nittany Lions won – a lot. Google it.
You can count losing seasons on one hand, beginning in 1950, the first season of Paterno’s mentor, Rip Engle, and on to Paterno, etc., etc.
Knowing the rich history on the gridiron makes the trajectory of the 2025 season harder to digest. It isn’t just a football thing. It’s virtually an existential thing.
First come losses to teams PSU shouldn’t lose to ever – like Northwestern and, ah, hem, Indiana (all due respect to the Hoosiers football Renaissance under Curt Cignetti. Do you think he will remain in Bloomington as long as Franklin lasted at State College?)
What’s next? A plague of locusts? The sky raining down frogs? A football depression to send Happy Valley into singing melancholy songs about how the good days are gone?
And so, Penn State, with a program that has spent money like geese poop, is at another crossroads. They happen. And, while football fans wait and wonder and worry about what the future holds, here’s a quick reminder that Penn State offers so much more than football. Dozens of sports, a beautiful campus with a gold-standard education.
The Lions are 3-6 with games against Michigan State, Nebraska and Rutgers. Penn State needs to win all three to be eligible for a bowl game.
