If not Saturday, then when?
For James Franklin, for Drew Allar, for this era of Penn State football that feels directly stuck in the current situation that won’t be rectified until at least 11 p.m. on Saturday night, if not now, when?
The stories and the headlines were coming. Everyone knew that the second Penn State’s 2025 schedule was announced.
Penn State would walk through its non-conference play against two Group of Six opponents and one FCS school before a bye week would leave plenty of time for the same, somewhat tired, now borderline cliche headlines and discussions to appear.
And the lingering questions left from Penn State’s non-conference performance have only made those questions a bit louder this time around.
Now, less than three days away from kickoff, everyone who cares – even from a neutral point of view – is once again stuck in the cycle of “if not now, when.”
That’s what is sitting on the 100-yard long green table that will be accentuated with a White Out on Saturday night.
Slice the stat however you can find it this week, Penn State under Franklin does not and has not played well in moments with the magnitude that will come by way of a 7:30 p.m. kickoff against No. 6 Oregon on Saturday night.
It’s happened with such great regularity that everyone is so acutely aware of that fact to the point of almost exhaustion.
Those conversations of drawn out for so long that even as part of that, we have to debate what is and isn’t a big game, what is and isn’t a big win. That task has become a tired one just as well. By the standards of the rest of the country, Penn State only lost one game last regular season and Penn State was only one of four teams left standing last season. It’s a favorable spot many other teams and fan bases would love to be in.
Yet in between the last time Penn State won a game that was deemed big and the time we’ve all had to generate our preconceived notions of what a big game is, Penn State has failed to meet those internal standards almost every time.
The football coach spent much of this offseason and even parts of this season reminding us of all of that. Repeatedly, he’s reflected on the fact that the sum of the outcome isn’t good enough for a large portion of this fan base when that sum doesn’t include the addition of one of these big games.
And he’s right.
Everyone, including himself, his quarterback, his team, his fan base, is tired of the spot that everyone involved has boxed itself in – with or without deliberate intent.
Penn State now finds itself at another one of these moments, where it’s in the crosshairs of the national spotlight and the local one firmly glued together with semi-self-manufactured tension. But the comments and frustrations voiced about this moment have become so tired and so worn that they’ve almost lost all meaning. Everything that’s come from Penn State’s repeated losses in moments like this has tangled up the sentiment into a bird’s nest of angst.
Yet everyone knows a win on Saturday night would mean something.
A lot of that anxiety at this moment has been fueled by Penn State’s – particularly offensive – play this season. Much of that also comes from the expectations manufactured by fans and media – with a heavy degree of reasonable credibility – for Penn State’s now third-year starting quarterback.
In the season opener, everyone saw an Allar that looked confident, largely carving up the Nevada defense with a new set of tools by way of transfer wide receivers. Of course, that was the position he didn’t have last year to help get Penn State over the moment it’s presently stuck at.
Relief, promise, hope that things would actually feel different entering the Sept. 27 date circled on calendars – even if they never could – felt possible.
Yet in the two following games, the version of Allar appearing before our eyes felt more akin to young 2023 Allar or Notre Dame 2024 Allar than USC 2024 and 2024 WVU Allar. The conundrum of a combined 86-6 beating of FIU and Villanova fell in the fact that at no point did Allar look as crisp and sharp, even in the same way he did against Nevada.
Every party involved in Penn State football, even head coach and quarterback, admitted that.
All of that is not too dissimilar to the tone that’s been struck when an opponent like Oregon appears on the schedule for Penn State over the better part of the last decade.
Everyone is aware of what’s at stake on Saturday night. Even in the new College Football Playoff era, which should be about just making the playoffs, a home game in front of the season’s largest crowd, which for a lot of people rightfully feels like a must-win scenario, is an event horizon for this purgatory.
The people who can truly only do something about that are the ones wearing blue on Saturday night.
Maybe Penn State’s defense is good enough to propel it to victory. Maybe a new opponent getting the White Out treatment in a game we’ve built up to a higher level of importance will break the hex that’s clutched all of Happy Valley so tightly.
Maybe those early games Oregon played tell us just as much as we know about Penn State, which is effectively nothing. Maybe the head coach will get over whatever this hump is. Maybe the quarterback and the offense will play with the ability we’ve all thought he could.
And maybe we will see Penn State win on Saturday night, only for us to kick this very feeling down the road until early November and later in December.
Or maybe Penn State will lose and we will do this all over again in November – just like we’ve done every other time.
Maybe there is no avoiding this feeling, regardless of what happens.
But it sure does feel like if not now, then when?
vs 
Time: 7:30 p.m.
TV: NBC
Announcers: Noah Eagle, Todd Blackledge, Kathryn Tappen
Radio: Penn State Sports Network
Announcers: Steve Jones, Jack Ham, Brian Tripp
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