tool name
closeIn many ways, Penn State is the envy of most major college football programs.
The Nittany Lions have top-of-the-line facilities, including a 108,000-seat stadium that generates around $4 million of revenue with each home game. They have terrific tradition, a signature style and a coach/CEO/sporting icon whose celebrity has not only given his program national renown but helped him bring in some of the country’s top recruits for nearly five decades.
Joe Paterno’s won a few games, too. Although the Nittany Lions and their 82-year-old leader have proven to the college football world during the last few years that old-school — with a few modern twists — can still get it done, it’s hard to put Penn State in the small but clearly defined class of the game’s current elite of USC, Florida, Ohio State, Oklahoma, LSU and Texas. All six have at least one national title in the last decade and at least two BCS bowl wins.
Is Penn State that far away? No. But it’s going to take at least a convincing win over a big-conference team in a BCS bowl, if not a national championship, to put the Nittany Lions in the discussion of the best of the best.
Following up on last year’s 11-2 season would be a good start. Penn State returns 11 starters from that team plus stud linebacker Sean Lee, but for every All-America candidate (and there are several on this team), there are at least two first-year starters.
Few disagree that Penn State is set up for a good season, but just how good? New Year’s Day bowl good or BCS title game good?
Here are some good starting points for both arguments.
Five reasons why the Nittany Lions could make a run at their third national championship:
•6.4. That’s the average yardage junior tailback Evan Royster has accumulated in 273 career carries. That’s the same average that Larry Johnson finished his career with after wiping out defenses to the tune of 2,087 yards and a 7.7 average during his senior season in 2002. No other Nittany Lion back that has played a lead role has even come close.
•Good hands under center. In Paterno’s previous 43 seasons as head coach, he’s entered the fall with a senior starting quarterback with at least one year of starting experience 14 times. In those 14 seasons, the Nittany Lions averaged 9.7 wins (Paterno’s overall average is 8.9) and a winning percentage of .810 (.749 overall).
Penn State won national titles in two of those seasons (in 1982 with Todd Black-ledge and in 1986 with John Shaffer) and went undefeated in two others (1969 with Chuck Burkhart and 1994 with Kerry Collins).
Piloting the 2009 Penn State team, of course, will be 23-year-old senior quarterback Daryll Clark, who went 11-2 as a starter last year.
•Lee-dership. Clark, Royster and junior Stefen Wisniewski should keep the offense in line, and defensive players like Jared Odrick, Jerome Hayes and Drew Astorino have earned the respect and allegiance of their teammates. But few players have the combination of fire, smarts and talent possessed by senior linebacker Sean Lee, who should spur not only the defense but the entire team to play above its head this season.
•Good place to start. In the early 1920s, it wasn’t uncommon for Penn State to open its schedule with four or five straight home games. But after 1923, it wasn’t until 1982 that the Nittany Lions again played their first four games in Beaver Stadium. They went 4-0 that season, 3-1 the next time it happened (2002), and 4-0 in 2005.
This season, they again have four home games to start the year. Incidentally, the fourth and final is against Iowa, which kept Penn State from a 4-0 start in 2002 with a 42-35 win in overtime and, much fresher in fans’ and players’ minds, kept the Nittany Lions from a perfect regular season last fall.
•They play in the Big Ten. The Nittany Lions’ conference schedule isn’t as easy as some might think, but the fact of the matter is the league doesn’t have anything close to a complete team right now, nor many of the do-two-or-three-things-really- well-and-everything-else- OK squads (think Barry Alvarez’s Wisconsin, Joe Tiller’s Purdue or Glen Mason’s Minnesota teams) that gave Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State fits during much of the last decade. Ohio State is the only team on the schedule that won’t need help from Penn State to beat the Nittany Lions, and the Buckeyes will have a tough time escaping Beaver Stadium unscathed.
Five reasons why they won’t:
•It’s slippery at the top. Since winning the 1986 national championship, Penn State has finished the season in the Associated Press Top 10 six times, including last season (eighth). But in the years that directly followed each of those first five, the Nittany Lions finished in the Top 10 the next season just once (1994).
•Green things come in threes. The Nittany Lions will have three new starters at wide receiver, three new starters along the offensive line and, even if A.J. Wallace works his way back into Paterno’s good graces, three new starters in the secondary. They’re going to need some time.
•They have to play two games in Michigan. The Nittany Lions’ record in Big Ten games since they joined the conference in 1993 — 80-48 — is pretty impressive. It gets even better if you throw out their visits to the Great Lakes State.
Since winning its first four games as a conference member in Michigan Stadium or Spartan Stadium, Penn State has lost nine of its last 11 games in those two stadiums.
The Lions haven’t won in Ann Arbor, where they will face a Wolverine squad that could go in various directions on Oct. 24, since 1996. And they’ll close out the regular season in East Lansing against a team of Spartans that is steadily improving under Mark Dantonio.
•Injuries. Each year, injuries before or during the season knock several talented teams out of the title hunt. Last year, the Nittany Lions were mostly lucky on that front but lost Lee for the season, had a still-woozy Clark misfiring at Iowa and played much of its loss to USC in the Rose Bowl without running backs Royster and Stephfon Green and right tackle Dennis Landolt. This year, they’ve already lost Mike Mauti and Pete Massaro to ACL tears and have several players — Lee, Green, Jerome Hayes and Brent Carter — coming back from serious injuries.
•They play in the Big Ten. Since Ohio State beat USC in the Rose Bowl to cap a 10-0 season in 1968, Big Ten teams have claimed only two national titles (Michigan in 1997 and Ohio State in 2002). Recent drubbings of the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions in BCS games have been the prime source of fuel for the “Big Ten is beat” bandwagon, one that doesn’t figure to lose many passengers until the league wins a national championship. If Penn State plays in the BCS title game this season, it will be in spite of, not because of, its conference affiliation.
Jeff Rice covers Penn State football for the Centre Daily Times. He can be reached at 231-4609 or jrice@centredaily.com.
In Print
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