Penn State football: seniors stuck with Nittany Lions through darkest days

Bowl games, double-digit win seasons and chances to win conference championships are the kinds of experiences a recruit is hoping for when he signs at a school like Penn State.

Yet for many of the 17 players who were honored on Senior Day at Beaver Stadium Nov. 26, none of those things were really possible when they began as freshmen on the Nittany Lions football team.

Just before the start of training camp that year, the NCAA announced the sanctions it was leveling against the school as a result of the Sandusky scandal. The sanctions were wide-ranging, harsh and most likely crushing for a guy who just began a football career at a major college.

They were also an out.

Any player on the Penn State roster could transfer anywhere at any time during the next year free of charge, so to speak. The player would not have to sit out a year as was usually the case. He could play immediately at his new school.

Some guys left. Understandably, there was very much deep soul searching among the rest of the team, but with the urging of Penn State students, fans, lettermen, then-coach Bill O’Brien and his staff, and especially that year’s amazing senior class, most stayed to play their football here.

The rest is well documented, and the long climb back from that summer is still continuing today in the third year of head coach James Franklin’s tenure.

Lost in all the shuffle perhaps was the fact that the 17 players who were honored before the game with Michigan State had the longest journey of all. They were here for everything, from O’Brien’s 0-2 start through last week’s 45-12 demolishing of the Spartans that gave the Nittany Lions their first Big Ten East championship.

What a ride it’s been for them, and it’s not over yet. Penn State will play Wisconsin for the Big Ten championship and then, who knows? The possibilities are still wide open. The Nittany Lions are playing for big stakes.

The players who walked out onto the field, greeted along the way by Franklin, were linebacker Brandon Bell, wide receiver Gordon Bentley, offensive linemen Tom Devenney, Derek Dowrey, Brian Gaia and Evan Galimberti, wide receiver Gregg Garrity, defensive back Malik Golden, long snapper Zach Ladonis, offensive linemen Wendy Laurent and Paris Palmer, running back Irvine Paye, defensive lineman Evan Schwan, defensive back Jordan Smith, linebackers Von Walker and Nyreem Wartman-White, and long snapper Tyler Yazujian.

Palmer, Wartman-White and Walker were unfortunately injured earlier in the year and are out for the season, but many of the others played and were major contributors in the win over the Spartans.

Walker, a special-teams standout from nearby Central Mountain High School, was a two-year captain for the Lions.

The careers at Penn State for these seniors will end at a major bowl game, something that looked all but impossible in that summer of 2012. Yet it happened nonetheless, and it happened not as much for this class as it did because of this class.