Penn State football edges Illinois, winning 21-7

I'm a Penn State native basketball Fan. Most seasons, hope is all I have. One positive aspect of being a fan of a team that struggles most seasons is the incredible satisfaction I get when they beat a team they shouldn't beat. I can sit back and watch opposing fan bases crumble as they try to explain to themselves why and how their team managed to lose to the Nittany Lions. This actually happened several times against Illinois.

Never in a million years would I have expected this football team would give me the same satisfaction. Whatever the reason, whether it was because of the joy they felt at having a top-notch team, because of the feeling of being insulted at being such an underdog, because of the false sense of security at having Kansas and had beaten Nebraska, or for the stupidity of thinking that Penn State was anywhere close to it. These two Illinois fans were crazy this week.

The Fighting Illini contingent seemed offended by this throughout the week:

1. Their head coach sweated again.
2. James Franklin took Illinois seriously enough to create a whiteout-like environment.
3. Penn State has an agreement with the NHL that prevents it from calling multiple games “the 'official' whiteout.”
4. Because of the new TV contracts, the Lions don't know in advance which games will be night games and which won't, making preseason selection difficult.
5. Until now, no one, including herself, thought Illinois would be this good.

I told you what happened in the game in the other summary. Today I will address this.

I have no problem with a fan base or their team being proud. I bear no ill will (pun intended) toward the Illinois contingent. Their team is doing quite well this season and could be bowl eligible well before November. If things go just right, they might even enjoy the conference. However, I don't like projections. They took a perceived slight, blew it up way past its expiration date, and then acted like Petulant Children™ when the inevitable happened. It's great to have hope, but don't let hope turn into arrogance. Arrogance leads to delusion, and delusion leads to believing that things are possible but simply not. Be happy that your team is doing well, but don't portray yourself as someone you're not.

It all makes sense when you think about it. When you try to explain James Franklin's history at Penn State, the word “excuses” quickly comes up. Whatever you want to call what he inherited doesn't change the fact that James Franklin only had half a scholarship roster when he took over the Nittany Lions in 2014. It took Franklin five seasons to even build a roster balanced enough to compete, but with the group of underdogs he had in 2016, he exceeded his expectations. A squad that couldn't afford busts had plenty along the way, and that routinely led to clunker after clunker with Penn State losing games they shouldn't have lost.

Of course, this was not due to the rebuilding task Franklin had in his hands, but rather his skills as a coach. It wasn't an unbalanced roster that led to a revolving door of offensive coordinators. It wasn't a lack of depth that led to an inability to run the ball or stop the run when two of your best players went down in the fourth quarter of a game in which you were up by two touchdowns. It wasn't circumstances that led to Penn State bottoming out during a global pandemic. It's not your bias that brings the clock management mistakes from nine years ago and acts as if they're still happening. Of course, it's not your hope that Penn State, with its mediocre coach, remains the hill to climb with M- and O-shaped mountains too high to climb.

The insistence that this process is a coaching shortage as part of a longer rebuild has created this process among people who, given all the dislocation of the past, believe that this is who Penn State is . That they can lose to almost anyone in the conference (or the nation*), and not in the “any Saturday” variety, but in the “James Franklin will give the game away” variety. Well, if this Saturday and the several Saturdays in the previous two seasons are any indication, Franklin isn't interested in letting the game slip.

Penn State has lost many players to injuries this season. But they now have the quality depth to compensate. Already facing challenges from unexpected quarters, the Nittany Lions had to rely on their offense to pull off a comeback and grind out a victory. Penn State did what you'd expect them to do for a team that wants to contend for the College Football Playoff. But people are stuck in the past, believing or perhaps hoping that stupid James Franklin will emerge like we haven't seen in years and give a game to a team that has no right to win it. Sorry friends, you'll have to try harder in the future.

I had no intention of even acknowledging this in an “official” matter. But I couldn't ignore the double standards any longer. The racist A strange phenomenon where people are far more critical of James Franklin for doing the same thing as other coaches in his class is absurd – after all, there is a coach in the new Big Ten with a joint top 10 win against the same team in their “only” major victory in the same season, being considered a top 5 coach and his team a national title contender.

Meanwhile, James Franklin is somehow missing his ceiling, he's reached his ceiling or whatever else is being expressed because he's doing exactly what other coaches are doing. I'm speaking directly to you, Penn State fans: Don't let anyone convince you that James Franklin is a bad, mediocre, or whatever coach because he, the black man, is judged much more harshly than his white colleagues. Don't reduce his tenure to the few games against Ohio State and Michigan that he didn't win. Franklin is a very good Coach who has elevated his program to the point where the Illinois players in the world can no longer compete. Don't let anyone tell you that this isn't good enough. The Ohio States of the world will be conquered in due course. The Michigans of the world have been conquered many times, you know. We'll see what happens with the USCs and Oregons of the world, but right now Penn State is one of the few teams in the country that has the privilege of having a one- or two-game season.

There are 14 other teams in this conference alone that would kill for this.

*As I write this, I'm staring towards Morgantown