By Chris Buchignani
I’ve got some good news and some bad news as the reeling 3-5 Nittany Lions return home to face – unbelievable as it may be – undefeated and second-ranked Indiana as double-digit underdogs (it’s not a misprint nor is this about basketball).
Let’s get all the bad news out of the way: First, there’s the obvious, which is that Penn State is a bad football team. While the Lions once occupied Indiana’s current position, ranked number two back before any actual games were played, the reality fell far short of expectations. In fact, this team could go down as one of the worst in program history and therefore, given the lofty preseason projections, the most disappointing in the annals of college football. They have, sadly, very much earned every one of those 14 points by which the Hoosiers are favored to beat them at Beaver Stadium.
To make matters worse, the entire rickety edifice that is Penn State Nittany Lions football – from the slogans and branding to the support staff and organizational philosophy to the coaches and players themselves – is about to come crashing down. Most of the people who have made the program what it is in 2025, to include its many successes and select but glaring flaws, already have one foot out of the door. A number of coaches and staffers will follow James Franklin to his next job, as will many of our current players with remaining eligibility, and the bulk of those who remain are likely to be dispensed with by his replacement if they don’t first move on via the job market or transfer portal. The remnants of the Franklin era are all but guaranteed to be scattered to the wind.
“So, what’s the good news?” you ask. Why, it’s the very same.
Allow me to submit that when things go as rotten as quickly as they have for Penn State football, it may not be the worst thing to rip apart and discard the entire operation, root and branch, in order to start anew. Indeed, the uniqueness of the Penn State football story affords both the institution and its next head coach an enticing opportunity for a fresh start that will be, yes, ripe with peril, but also pregnant with possibility.
Go all the way back to early 1950, when the Pennsylvania State College, on the cusp of realizing the long-held dream of becoming a fully-fledged university in 1953, heeded calls from the student body to hire, “a big-time college coach for a big-time college.” Penn State ultimately selected Brown University head coach Charles “Rip” Engle for that role, who brought along his former quarterback, Joe Paterno, to serve as an assistant. The Engle-Paterno era spanned a remarkable 61 years, which of course saw Penn State claim a spot among the most successful programs in college football. Joe’s unprecedented longevity and success, and his outspoken style, defined the brand of Nittany Lions football for generations. As the real world sped by outside the confines of Happy Valley, with State’s peers trading one leader for another many times over, the black shoes and basic blues of the Grand Experiment were a constant. Before the end, Paterno had coached many pairs of fathers and sons, and two such legacies in particular – Michael Mauti and Michael Zordich – led an unforgettable season in 2012 that in many ways cemented the old man’s legacy even as it seemed to disintegrate around them.
Think what you will about the manner in which the Paterno era ended, with the Sandusky Scandal and the administration’s response to it. We won’t untangle that knot here today.
Much has been written about it already, with even more, probably, ought to be hashed out before the end. For our purposes, we will simply acknowledge that those terribly unusual circumstances created a situation where James Franklin, upon his arrival in 2014 following the tempestuous two-year interregnum of Bill O’Brien, inherited an opportunity to systematically imprint his vision for Penn State football onto the program’s identity in ways that would have been otherwise far more difficult, if not impossible.
This is not a criticism.
While James would no doubt object to the notion that his path was relatively unobstructed by ghosts from the past and those who cling to them, I’d gently suggest that any storied program brings along such baggage, and he probably had a less onerous task than those who followed the likes of Bo Schembechler, Bear Bryant, Tom Osborne, or Bobby Bowden, especially considering his predecessor had been on the job for nearly half a century. Regardless of the degree of difficulty, the extent to which James Franklin built Penn State football back up according to his own ideals is a testament to both his ability and his tenacity. Although it ultimately ended with hurt feelings and bruised egos – very much the norm across college football, a fact of life with which we’re now becoming acquainted here in Happy Valley, however belatedly – we ought not forget that his 12-year tenure, itself an unusually long time in the modern sport, lasted so long because the good times and fond memories outnumbered the bad.
Make no mistake though, the program has become fully his. A self-proclaimed micromanager, Franklin flourished in the freakish conditions created by the scandal’s aftermath: taking over a blue blood program that was also a blank canvass. Twelve years is, as I said, an eternity in college football. James had the fifth-longest coaching tenure in FBS the morning Pat Kraft climbed the stairs to his Lasch Building office. It became hard to discern where the personality and approach of James Franklin stopped and modern Penn State football, as distinct from the identity of its long-time head coach, began. As hard as it may be to process, the bulk of that infrastructure is about to follow Franklin out the door, by choice or otherwise.
So, for the second time this century, Penn State, one of the winningest programs in the history of college football, will offer its next head coach a veritable blank slate. How much of what comes next will reflect what came before? What parts of who “We Are” are vital to retain, and where can we improve to master a changing landscape and achieve the elite status that stubbornly eluded us for a decade? Are the foundational principles on which the program was grounded for so many successful seasons, the precepts of Paterno’s Grand Experiment and Franklin’s “transformational, not transactional” extension of it, even relevant in an age of billion-dollar media rights deals, direct revenue sharing, and players transferring from school to school at the drop of a hat?
This moment affords us the chance for reflection and introspection. As we wind down a forgettable season of missed opportunities and broken dreams, we can step back and take the long view of the path we’ve traveled and seek out lessons for the road ahead. Certainly, the risk of descending into the endless death loop that appears to have ensnared the Nebraska Cornhuskers seems just as, if not more, likely than realizing the fantasy-come-true of the Georgia Bulldogs with Kirby Smart. But the chance to make the right hire, and to empower the next leader of the Nittany Lions with the freedom to replace Penn State’s blank slate with a new vision for changing times that nevertheless capitalizes on everything the school and place already have to offer is compelling.
Measured forethought and careful decision-making in this critical moment could decide the fate of the football program – and with it, the outlook of our entire area – for years to come. Pray for the wisdom of our leaders, and trust that the story of Penn State (both before, during, and after the time of the Paterno) has been one of the right people at the right moment making the right choices For the Glory of Old State.
Chris Buchignani is cohost of The Obligatory PSU Podcast and The Obligatory PSU Pregame Show, entering its 10th season this Fall. He teaches a course on Penn State Football History for Penn State OLLI.
