Time To Find Out What The Patience Is Worth

Patience might pay off Saturday. 

Or you might have to find more patience after Saturday as much as you don’t want to. 

By the time the sun goes down on Saturday, we will know what’s next for this Penn State football program.

We will know what’s next for head coach James Franklin and his legacy in Happy Valley. 

We will know the score of the football game and we will finally know if patience paid off – or if we’re going to have to find more of it, somehow. 

As Penn State takes on Michigan Saturday afternoon, Penn State fans will finally pay with their patience. The only question is whether or not that patience was worth anything. 

Saturday is the last real chance Franklin has to push Penn State over the edge it’s been stuck on since 2016 in the four-team College Football Playoff era. It’s the final chance for him to change what the national and even local perception of him is. 

After Saturday, there are no more do-overs. When it comes to patience, it’s time to pay.

Whether you know it or not, you made a deal as a Penn State fan this season – even after the price of patience you’ve been paying since 2016. This year, there are 12 games on the schedule and reasonably speaking, Franklin’s squad has or should handle 10 of them. 

You have to be patient through 10 of them to get to two of them. The first one of those two came on Oct. 21 and the second one comes Saturday.

As a college football fan, you have to be patient a lot, even when you don’t want to be. Sometimes that’s just what it takes. You’re a third party to the first party hopefully getting the job done. There’s little you can do beside just being patient.

It takes you waiting for the right recruiting class to mature. It takes you being patient for the right quarterback to come along or the right offensive coordinator to take over or the right schedule to play out the way that benefits you the most. 

It takes patience and sometimes, it gets shorter and thinner. Sometimes, it gets refilled. It never runs out but sometimes you pay more yet don’t always get more from it.

And after Penn State’s loss to Ohio State on Oct. 21, the patience got a bit shorter. But again, you made a two-game deal this season even after you’ve spent whatever patience you already had. 

When the first one didn’t work out, you were going to have to save some for the second one. 

And if Penn State wins the second one, the patience will pay off jackpot big. Penn State will have beaten a top-10 team, the win missing from its résumé in 2017, 2019 and even 2022. More importantly, Franklin will have won the big game that’s been circled since the first big game this season.

Your patience will be rejuvenated by the well that is a big win in college football and that will be Franklin’s reward.

And if Penn State loses, you’re allowed to be a lot more impatient because you won’t have much left. 

Saturday will be the last crack that Penn State gets to an 11-win regular season in the four-team era. And 11-win season likely would cash in on not just the patience of this season but of 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. 

Those were the years there were expectations, reasonable or not, by some or by many, that Penn State should be doing more than just going to New Year’s Six bowls. It’s greedy to some fanbases but it’s probably fair given who Penn State’s most direct competitors are – with Saturday’s opponent being one of them.

And with that, a loss would leave even the most faithful with less patience for what happens next. 

It would be another great roster squandered away. It would be a year of the quarterback that’s supposed to be the one that would complete the job wasted. It would mean – particularly thanks to his contact – that once again you’re going to have to wait until next year and deal with it whether you like it or not. 

Franklin isn’t going anywhere. And likely for Penn State, there’s no one better — even if that’s for worse. He will be here for quite a while and you’re going to have to be patient through that. 

A loss would be another ask at the well for patience because again, you made another deal that’s called being a college football fan. It’s just a very big ask.

Making it is not easy given how he’s 3-16 in games against top-10 teams. A loss makes the record one game worse and seeing that happen is not easy either. With how Franklin has publicly challenged his teams to be “elite” and the administration for more support with facilities, a loss makes it that much harder to be patient. 

And if he wins on Saturday, he’s done everything he can do to put Penn State in the best position to make the playoff.

The patience it took to get to Saturday will have paid off and every ounce of 4th-and-five or weather delay in East Lansing will have been worth it. 

If he loses, there will always be a “yes, but” attached to his name with what comes next and missing the playoff in this era. That’s the cost of the patience – which might not be worth much to you. 

Next year the rules are different when the playoff expands but that “yes but” will still follow. 

“Yes, he got Penn State to the 12-team playoff, but he’s supposed to do that with this contract.” 

“Yes, he led Penn State to a 10-win season, but he’s never won the big games.”

“Yes, he won enough to keep Penn State relevant, but he didn’t do enough to send them to the next level and now it’s even harder to win a title.” 

Saturday serves as the last chance for him to do everything in his power right now to prevent the phrase “yes but” being attached to his name. 

It also serves as the last chance for him to pay out on the patience he’s been asking for in the four-team era. 

That’s what Saturday will mean, whether or not the patience he asked for – directly or indirectly – will have been worth something. 

Because by the time the sun goes down Saturday, things will be different. 

The patience will have been used to pay but for what?

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