Penn State Football: Perfect or Not, Nittany Lions’ Goals Still Alive

With five games left in the regular season, Penn State finds itself the likely favorite in four of those contests, playing three of them within the friendly confines of Beaver Stadium.

The last week has been, on every level, an exploration in what Penn State football is and is not. The Nittany Lions in the year 2022 are seemingly better than they get credit for while also being flawed to the point that a loss to Michigan and what one might politely assume to be a pending loss to Ohio State are not at all unexpected. This leaves Penn State in the difficult position of being stuck somewhere between the program that it wants to be and the programs it’s trying to avoid becoming.

There is a certain irony in the fact Penn State’s success has turned the vast majority of its wins into presumed outcomes void of any real celebration. It’s not so much that wins over Northwestern, Minnesota and Purdue should be seen as the aspirational highlights of a season but winning is inherently hard. If it wasn’t hard more teams would do it and Penn State would find itself winning fewer games in the process.

That’s not to say fans, players and coaches should settle for being just a few clicks shy of what they want to become, but it also doesn’t make nights like Saturday evening some unremarkable outcome either. Penn State managed to host a White Out game against an opponent fans are generally indifferent to just a week after getting blown out by Michigan and filled the stadium well before kick, subsequently winning the game in fairly convincing fashion. If that’s not the sign of a healthy program then what is?

In total, if one considers the overarching goal Penn State has this season it is as follows: win. Win enough games that when Drew Allar becomes Penn State’s starting quarterback there is enough forward momentum that the program feels like it’s growing into something and not digging out of something.

“It definitely makes me feel good. It’s better than losing, that’s for sure,” Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford said of the payoff of working hard all week. “So I think that it’s like anything — everybody puts in work every single day. Everybody’s got goals in mind that they really want to accomplish. And obviously ours [happen] in front of a lot of people. It’s just working really hard and just making sure that you’re staying the course no matter what.”

And Penn State’s goals, generally, are all still right there. Because at the end of the day if you, the fan, knew that Penn State was looking down the barrel of a 10-win season heading to a bowl, you would take it in a heartbeat. Does that mean losing to Michigan and Ohio State? Yes. Does it mean a chance at hitting 11 wins for the seventh time since 1997? Also yes. Not perfect, but also not bad.

“Fulfilled,” receiver Mitchell Tinsley said of how winning games him feel. “That’s the emotion that resonates with me. We put a lot of work into it. I think this is probably the only sport— we practice so much and only have 12 guaranteed games. … all wins are tough to get no matter who you’re playing, that was a good team we played today.”

There’s something slightly tragic in a sporting sense with how Clifford’s career at Penn State could end. He will have spent over half a decade with the program having been good but not quite good enough. He could deliver a 10- or 11-win season this year for the second time in his career and will still have been the guy who never beat Ohio State or won a Big Ten title. Still, charged with the same thing every quarterback is — to leave the program in as good of shape or better shape than when he took over — Clifford will have met that standard if all goes according to plan.

And yet as he was announced as the starter he was booed, a complicated response to a complicated career, but there he was, standing on the field knowing that no small portion of the nearly 110,000 in attendance were hoping for someone else to take the job from him. Coming off a blowout loss to Michigan, maybe that’s simply how the cookie crumbles so many years into a career, but as Penn State looks very reasonably at a highly successful season, it’s hard not to feel for the captain of that ship.

“I really just have a lot of trust and care for the people in the program and coaches and the players,” Clifford said on Saturday. “So realistically —we have a passionate fan base. I understand that and they can think what they want to think. But I’m gonna focus on what I can do on the field. I want to give my my heart and my soul every single time I step on the field. Nobody can take that away from me, so I know that for a fact. I’m just gonna focus on the program, the people on our team, and that’s about it.”

And that could result in 10 or 11 wins. Something hard to boo, no matter what you want to see Penn State become one day.