For as long as James Franklin has been the head coach at Penn State there have been a few messages spouted off every week. None ringing louder and perhaps more controversially than each and every week being the same as the last.
It isn’t that the notion of being even keel is a bad thing, but fans and the media want to hype things up. They want Penn State’s game against Pitt to mean something more than a game against Kent State. They want to see a game against Ohio State come with a week full of great quotes and battle speeches.
But that has never been Franklin’s way. Certainly not in public, certainly not on a daily basis.
The whole ‘unrivaled’ motto has probably gotten him in the most trouble, if for no other reason than Penn State certainly is rivaled and for a program that had only managed to get out of the sanction era just above .500 the Nittany Lions are certainly beatable as well.
That is really just a semantics lesson though, nobody is remembering Penn State’s marketing theme four plays deep into the second quarter and players certainly aren’t trying that much harder just to prove them wrong.
So the combination of the two has –for the better part of the past two and now almost three years– come across as some sort of inaccurate perception of greatness. That Penn State might be better off if the Nittany Lions accepted their role as the underdog, accepted their place in the college football world as something a little less than unrivaled and that some weeks you just have a big game and nobody is going to be able to convince you otherwise.
Outside the program it’s probably safe to say Franklin has lost the battle when it comes to convincing people Penn State is better off this way. Better off treating each week the same.
That was until now.
Winning has a funny way of making you look smart but throughout preparation for Ohio State there wasn’t much of an indication that something big was on the horizon. The pads hit a little harder, something Franklin wrote down on paper to remind his team of later, that they should bring that intensity all the time. But other than that the message was the same. Ohio State is just the next team on the schedule.
Is that why Penn State won? No.
But it might be why Penn State doesn’t lose to Purdue.
‘I think one of the things that help us, is we don’t change our approach, ever,’ Franklin said on Wednesday. ‘So I think since we didn’t change our approach on the front end, we don’t need to change our approach on the back end, and you know, it’s business as usual for us. It was a great game. It was a great environment and it was great to see our players go out and play well and it was great to see the fans enjoy it so much, and our alumni and letter men and all those things. But again, it’s on to the next game.’
Talk to the players and the message is the same.
‘It’s cliché but it’s so necessary, because you can’t look beyond. It’s as simple as that,’ Jason Cabinda said. ‘Right now, all the focus is on Purdue and for us, it’s a Super Bowl every single week because the next game is our Super Bowl, it’s as simple as that. I think for us, taking that mentality and knowing that whatever you did the week before kind of isn’t enough.’
‘Whatever amount of film you watched last week or extra work you may have put in last week isn’t enough for this week because we have to grow as a team and get better every single week. You know, as I said, we put that Ohio State win kind of behind us, and now it’s moving on to Purdue. And now it’s putting in even more work than we did against Ohio State to be 1-0 this week. That’s kind of the mantra and the mind-set that we take each week.’
And so it might be Franklin that gets the last laugh with three years of an even keel approach. If his team is as focused as it seems, then Penn State will follow up one of its biggest wins arguably ever with a crucial road win and a fourth straight victory heading into the final four and very winnable games in the regular season. Maybe that happens even if Penn State had circled Ohio State on the calendar as the biggest game ever.
But maybe Ohio State wins if it calls a timeout instead of rushing the kick on the field.
