The 2 Kinds of Penn State Football Adversity: In-Game and Post-Game

Penn State coach Matt Campbell talks a lot about handling Adversity. A lot. It’s going to come, he says. It’s how you handle it.

Adversity came to Beaver Stadium on Saturday night. And the guy on the other sidelines, Luke Fickell — his team playing poorly in a hostile environment and his seat already very warm after a 20-21 start to his tenure at Wisconsin — handled Adversity better.

Much better.

Wisconsin trailed 17-0 in the first half and 20-10 with 3:31 left in the game. Fickell’s quarterback, Colton Joseph, threw three interceptions (Adversity tripled) — including two in the game’s opening 19 minutes, and one of them was a pick-six (Adversity squared). In the game’s first 45 minutes, the Badgers had all of 10 points, 93 yards passing and eight first downs.

Yet, Fickell stuck with Joseph, and kept him throwing. In the final 15 minutes, Joseph completed eight of 16 passes for 142 yards and the winning touchdown as Wisconsin scored 14 points, had 10 first downs and gained 208 yards of offense. 

And a victory. Wisconsin and Fickell and Joseph handled Adversity better. At the time they needed to the most. During the game.

“This game is about winning, and we talked about that all year long, but to see how they handled Adversity, to see what they did, to see how they kept fighting, see how they didn’t give in, there’s a conviction that we challenged them,” Fickell said after the game, which the Badgers won 24-20. “I challenged them to show the conviction to fight, and we learned a lot about ourselves today.”

Meanwhile, on the way to watching that 17-point lead evaporate, Campbell looked indecisive and conservative, his offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser looked mousey and his quarterback, Rocco Becht, looked ineffective. Penn State was hit — hard — by Adversity, and did not respond well.

After the game, Campbell picked up his Adversity mantra. Expected, since it was the Nittany Lions’ first loss of the season and their first loss under Campbell. Expected, because they have a short week coming up. They fly to Chicago on Thursday to play Northwestern on Friday night on national television in the grand opening of their new $900 million stadium in what will be the biggest home game in the Wildcats’ 140 seasons of college football.

The thing is, Campbell was talking about responding to Adversity following the game, moving forward. Not the Adversity occurring real-time, during the game. Big difference.

“I’ve said this multiple times: Adversity is what college football is about,” Campbell said afterwards. “The ability to overcome Adversity and the ability to unify and rally forward. This will be a great test for us. We’ll find out a lot more about ourselves here in the next six days from our coaching staff and our players.

“The reality of it is, these are all correctable things if we’re willing and humble enough to be able to make the great corrections. It will be a great challenge for us. Not going to be easy, but you know we look forward to the challenge to grow ourselves forward.”

OHIO ROOTS x 2

I do not think I’ve seen this anywhere, but you could say that Fickell and Campbell are pretty good comps for each other, though Fickell’s success at Cincinnati outweighs what Campbell did at Toledo or Iowa State. At Cincy, Fickell led the Bearcats to seasons of 11, 11 and 13 victories. In 2021, Cincinnati beat Notre Dame and made it to the College Football Playoff as the No. 4 seed. Fickell has done less with more at Wisconsin, where he went 4-8 in 2025, his third season as the head coach in Madison. The quick comp:

Age — Fickell 53, Campbell 46
Career record — Fickell 83-47 (.638), Campbell 110-71 (.608)
Schools as head coach — Fickell 3 (Ohio State as 1-year interim, Cincinnati, Wisconsin), Campbell 3 (Toledo, Iowa State, Penn State)
Roots — Fickell, Columbus, Ohio; Campbell, Massillon, Ohio
College career — Fickell, defensive line, Ohio State; Campbell, defensive line, Mount Union

My carpe diem point: Both had the chance to have a huge impact on the game’s outcome when Adversity struck. One did. Cool hand Luke.

Even though it was a road game for Wisconsin, the two head coaches entered the game evenly matched, with a long career in the profession. They both had to be feeling the pressure: Campbell in his first big Big Ten game in Beaver Stadium, and Fickell, potentially weighed down by winning only six of the past 20 games heading into the contest. According to The Athletic, their player payrolls are very similar, too. Penn State is seventh in the Big Ten at $29-$32 million and Wisconsin is eighth, at $27-$31 million. Penn State was favored, but upon further review…

AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

On Saturday, Adversity hit them both.

Fickell and his quarterback reacted in real time. Campbell and his quarterback said next time they’ll do better.

“I got to be better for the offense; I got to be better for this team,” Becht said. “I can’t put us in scenarios where our backs are backed up and we got to have a big play.  We have to continue to move the chains, stay in front of the sticks, and I didn’t do my part today.”

It was Becht’s start No. 43 as a college quarterback, and fourth for Penn State. He is 29-14 overall and 3-1 at Penn State. His final passing stats of 12 of 29 (41.4%) for 114 yards, with one interception and three batted balls, was one of the worst performances his entire college starting career, I surmised after checking out his game-by-game statistics on espn.com. (In the running: a 2023 loss at Oklahoma, wins over UCF and Kansas State in 2024, and a road loss at TCU and road wins at TCU and Oklahoma State in 2025. Important to note: He can win when he’s rocky.)

Becht, who completed only 8 of his final 24 passes against Wisconsin, bristled a bit when I asked him after the game if the moment, the crowd or the physicality of a Big Ten opponent were too big for the Nittany Lions. 

“Yeah, I don’t think that has anything to do with it,” Becht replied. “We’ve all been here. We’re all older guys on this team. We’ve played in big games before. I don’t think that has anything to do with it. We just didn’t come out with the win today. We have to be better with our drops.”

In essence, he and his teammates have faced Adversity before. And will do so again. Soon.

Penn State’s next three games will feature plenty of big moments— and likely, Adversity — in the next three weeks. After Northwestern, which looked good in a 29-23 loss at Indiana on Friday, Penn State plays host to USC for a White Out on Oct. 10. Then it travels to the Big House to face Michigan on Oct. 17. USC and Michigan are coming off potentially debilitating losses of their own. Could be all night games. And, after what we saw on Saturday night, maybe even nightmares.