By Chris Buchignani
The sun shone brightly on an excited Beaver Stadium crowd in early September of 2022. It was the start of another football season, and their Nittany Lions were hosting the Ohio Bobcats for the home opener, a typical early-season mismatch, the sort where the visitors collected a paycheck in return for the indignity of being walloped by the home team.
The outcome of the game was essentially a foregone conclusion, but the prospects for the season to come were anything but. Penn State was coming off a miserable stretch of football that began with a losing record in the tumultuous COVID year of 2020. That hangover had then carried over to the following campaign, one in which the Lions had peaked at #4 in the polls but finished a disastrous 7-6 with a bowl loss to Arkansas. A key factor in that 2021 team’s misfortune was the total collapse of its running game.
For a program used to replacing one star tailback with another – Franco and Lydell begat Curt Warner begat Ki-jana begat LJ begat Saquon and so on – the Nittany Lions of ’21 broke the mold by fielding one of the worst rushing attacks in modern Penn State history. The only comparable full-season efforts were the hapless 3-9 team of 2003 and a 2014 squad squeezed tightly by the grip of punishing NCAA sanctions. For a roster supposedly stocked with top talent to have failed so spectacularly in a year where excitement and enthusiasm had abruptly given way to disappointment (Iowa) and embarrassment (Illinois) was jarring to a fanbase accustomed success; the mostly hopeful onlookers could be forgiven for harboring a bit of uneasiness about the months ahead.
So when it happened that, late in the first quarter of an all-but-assured blowout, freshman running back Nick Singleton, Pennsylvania’s Gatorade High School Player of the Year and one of the nation’s most coveted recruits, took a handoff 70 yards to the endzone for State’s second score of the day, people took notice. When he did it again, scampering 44 yards to paydirt extending the lead to 40-7, folks began to get excited. Maybe this young phenom might be everything that was promised. Singleton’s fellow true freshman runner, Kaytron Allen, the other touted back in the celebrated recruiting class of 2022, finished the day with a quiet 23 yards on six carries. But the spark of hope had been lit.
Singleton and Allen combined for 172 yards on 19 carries the following week in a lopsided victory over Auburn, including more homerun plays from Nick, proving the previous week was no fluke of inferior competition. The dynamic duo of freshmen runners put teeth back into Penn State’s ground game and restored a sense of fun to its offense, catalyzing a run that culminated in Pasadena and a Rose Bowl trophy.
It was a cold, blustery day in Piscataway, New Jersey four years later, with a very different sort of Penn State team, a battered and dispirited bunch, barely hanging on in a fight for mere bowl eligibility in the final game of their regular season. Along the way, the two backs had been at the forefront of the highest highs and lowest lows a football team can experience – from one drive away from reaching the national title game to leaving the field in defeat on Homecoming, only hours away from their head coach being fired. As hard as the team had played for interim coach Terry Smith after James Franklin was fired, and as much as their raw talent exceeded that of their opponent, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, themselves in search of a crucial sixth victory and the program’s first conference win over Penn State, refused to go away. Each time the Rutgers offense took the field, they found success against a distracted Nittany Lions’ defense.
Yet every time Old State surrendered a score, the team’s offense returned to the field ready with an answer – thanks to Kaytron Allen. A week removed from becoming the program’s all-time leading rusher, Allen – the tortoise to Singleton’s hare, who had finally emerged from his more ballyhooed counterpart’s shadow in their final year together in Blue and White – relentlessly punished the Rutgers defense. His 226 yards on the ground represented the best single-game performance for a Nittany Lions since Larry Johnson’s 2,000-yard season in 2002. By day’s end, Kaytron had surpassed 4,000 career rushing yards while Nick eclipsed three career records (rushing and total touchdowns, all-purpose yards) held by the legendary Saquon Barkely. Perhaps more importantly and largely thanks to their efforts, Penn State won the day 40-36. The two backs, who had arrived together in Happy Valley and instantly transformed the team’s rushing attack, walked off the field as victors, each having secured pride of place in the program’s hallowed record books.
The unforgettable moments, the dominant performances, the satisfying big wins, and the fewer, but no less painful, tough losses connecting that sun-drenched blowout of Ohio and that chilly narrow escape at Rutgers tell the story of an era in Happy Valley and a pair of young men whose careers defy every trend corrupting college football.
Friends. Roommates. Competitors who pushed one another throughout their superlative careers, never giving in to jealousy, yet neither giving way to the other in their striving to be the best. Either one or both could have left Penn State last season for a shot at the NFL or a bigger payday in the transfer portal, and yet they returned. They were denied the magical season they had hoped for, but they cemented their place in the pantheon of Penn State’s greatest and most beloved Lettermen. What’s more, they gave us a sorely-needed reminder that even as the game’s traditional framework comes apart around us, the best of what it has to offer still clings to life.
Don’t take these moments, or these fellow Nittany Lions, for granted. Not ever. The spirit of pride and devotion to team, school, and place is the glue that holds this whole thing together, even when our days are wracked with confusion and doubt. Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen should reassure us that whatever comes next for Penn State football, it will all work out in the end. The gratitude for what has past and the excitement what might come next will keep bringing us back, no matter what.
The stories of these players, and the times we spend together watching them, stitch together the fabric of Penn State’s community and the collective memory that sustains it. The mythology will grow over time. You will contribute. With each passing year and every retelling, their feats will become a bit more spectacular, but you will never tire of recounting the days you spent watching Nick and Kaytron run the ball for Penn 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.
