“We hardly know how to make an editorial comment upon our record at foot-ball this season, but we feel safe in saying that it has not been as brilliant as might been expected.”
– The Free Lance, December 1889
PASADENA, California — Inside of sixth page of the December 1889 edition of The Free Lance, the precursor to The Daily Collegian, an authorless piece was written marking the lowest point in Penn State football’s early history.
Back then, the Free Lance was published monthly. They, in all likelihood editor George Meek, had time to reflect on what then Penn State College, its students, fans and alumni had witnessed.
A 106-0 loss to Lehigh.
Statistically, it’s the worst in Penn State football history. One hundred six points allowed. Zero points scored.
Meek – the man critical in giving Penn State its initial colors of pink and black – could hardly remark on the moment. Yet there was nowhere to truly point the blame because back then Penn State didn’t have a coach of record.
One hundred thirty-six years later, The Daily Collegian has, like most other news institutions, shifted to a digital-first model. It’s still published on paper, but far less frequently than when it became the State Collegian, Penn State Collegian and then the heyday of The Daily Collegian.
Now, virtually anyone in the world can log on and see what happened within seconds of it happening inside the Penn State community. They didn’t have to wait a month to find out about a football score. You can find the piece about the most recent one here.
It’s about a 42-37 loss to a previously winless 0-4 UCLA team coached by an interim coach and an offensive coordinator who just got the job on Thursday.
Emotionally speaking, it’s the worst loss in Penn State football history.
The blame falls solely on James Franklin.
A game prior to Penn State’s 106-0 loss to Lehigh, Penn State played Lafayette.
It lost that game 26-0.
Of the hundreds of losses in Penn State football history, it’s a forgettable one.
“…Lafayette, in which, while beaten by the score of 26 to 0 we feel we did ourselves credit”
A game prior to Penn State’s 42-37 loss to UCLA, Penn State played Oregon. It lost that game 30-24 in double overtime. Of the hundreds of losses in Penn State football, it’s an important one.
In the Franklin era, last Saturday’s loss to the Ducks felt like some sort of breaking point. A loss in yet another big game, a loss when the spotlight was the brightest.
But there, all of the probabilities and possibilities for what this season could have become were on the table. It was painful. It was heart-shattering but it wasn’t an unexpected loss.
Franklin had only ever lost those games. In the games that weren’t “big,” he almost always won. It’s made his tenure, while maddening at times, more than tolerable, even when one loss has turned into two.
In 2021, the worst year of Franklin’s 12 at Penn State, there were reasons. There were, as much as we hate excuses, valid excuses. Sean Clifford got hurt at Iowa, Ta’Quan Roberson didn’t know how to snap a football, and there were some interesting play calls in nine overtimes a week later against Illinois.
There were always some tangible, valid – even frustrating – reasons.
But when Penn State, in 2025, left for the West Coast as a 26-point favorite against UCLA, there were only optimistic thoughts that Franklin, a coach who has his team ready for lesser moments, would have this team, with millions of dollars sown in roster retention in a very different era of college athletics than 1889, ready to get back on track.
He did not.
There were no reasons — even if he tried to offer some after the game. The coaching failed the team and the coaching failed the fan base.
It appears, as in 1889, things are not what might have been expected. Penn State’s defense, led by Franklin and by the sport’s highest-paid coordinator, looked listless as the Bruins took their first lead of the season, five games in. It was one they never relinquished.
Bruins quarterback Nico Iamaeleava, the much heralded transfer from Tennessee, had taken much flak for making a bad decision for returning to his home state, but instead it was Jim Knowles and Franklin who were making bad decisions. The Bruins offense waltzed down the gorgeous grass in America’s Stadium against a defensive line that was pushed back repeatedly.
It was, on paper, a team that Penn State should have never had an issue with for how good this defense supposedly was.
It was a team that lost to UNLV, to Northwestern, to New Mexico.
It was a team that beat Penn State.
As Penn State continued to lose in the biggest moments and on the biggest stage with now-cliched reliability, there was an unspoken pact made between head coach and fan. If Penn State was going to continue to lose games to Ohio State, Michigan and now Oregon, it could not and would not lose games to far inferior opponents.
In that accord, there was a tolerance that’s been built up in this fan base – even when last week’s loss to Oregon felt all the more painful.
But Franklin betrayed that bond on Saturday inside the Rose Bowl Stadium. Any lasting strand of trust holding that bond together is gone.
He didn’t just lose the game – he lost the fanbase.
Even as Penn State rallied back from a 27-7 halftime deficit, Penn State didn’t have the preparation or the play-calling it needed. There were offside penalties, fumbles and missed tackles. In a final dash of hope, Penn State couldn’t convert on a 4th-and-2, deep inside the Bruins half of the field, in part because its offensive line couldn’t push back the rush.
This was supposed to be the best offensive line in school history, as Franklin put it this offseason. It couldn’t find traction on that gorgeous grass at all. Penn State rushed for just 157 yards against the same team that gave up 298 to New Mexico. Quarterback Drew Allar, often a fellow scapegoat but played well against the Bruins, was forced to scramble often.
This was a team that was supposed to have beaten UCLA by 26 points.
This was supposed to be – with all of the investment, all of the energy, all of the alignment – the team that finally got Penn State out of the hellish purgatory it’s in.
This was supposed to be the team that Penn State fans were going to revel in come late January. With major events scheduled around the final weekend of January, it appears Penn State’s athletic director Pat Kraft had penciled the weekend for a potential parade too.
Instead, there will likely be a potential parade of private jets landing and taking off at University Park Airport’s short runway as Penn State must consider that it’s time for a change.
Franklin’s contract says that Penn State must pay him more than $50 million if it wants to fire him on Sunday. Whether to do it then is the sticking point and the price of the buyout has always been the sticking point.
But the Kraft era is about return on dollars spent. It’s been bold, audacious, brash and noticeable in every movement he’s made. It’s vastly different from any of his other predecessors. He, of course, was the one leading the charge for the $700 million stadium renovation that his athletics’ – and only his athletics’ – budget must pay for.
That makes all of this all the more complicated but it makes all of this obvious.
This fan base has been asked repeatedly to invest more and more into this fandom on the basis that an increase in investment would yield something that hasn’t happened in 39 years. The NIL movement has been the biggest, but a Legacy Fund fee (which is really just covering the cost of revenue sharing) on things like stadium food, parking and tickets has raised prices even more. That came a year after Nittany Lion Club donations increased by $100 per seat.
Even the semi-NASCAR-ification of Beaver Stadium under a purported field-naming rights deal has been something we’ve had to accept.
But it’s hard to keep asking for money and change when the product that’s being delivered doesn’t deliver.
To get out of this situation though, Penn State will ask for more money. There will be a buyout that will cost multiple millions depending on when it comes or who makes the decision. There will be the money spent on a new contract for a new head coach. There will be the money thrown at finding the right roster. There will be the money and the time it takes to do all of it.
But it would be even more frustrating for this era of Penn State football to continue.
Penn Staters are too loyal not to spend the money either. That was evident yesterday when there was a strong mix of fans inside the Rose Bowl wearing blue and white.
Penn State fans will still show up. They’ll always show up.
This is the university that went through one of, if not, the worst, athletics scandals in American collegiate sports. Yet, this fanbase always came back. That’s what makes this loss so damning — that Franklin did something almost impossible. He lost the fanbase and yet when Meek’s original colors return to Beaver Stadium next Saturday for Homecoming, Penn State fans will be there.
The only question is whether or not Franklin will – even if there is no question that he shouldn’t.
More than 13 decades ago, Penn State lost a football game 106-0.
Statistically, the worst loss in school history.
About 13 hours ago, Penn State lost a football game, 42-37.
Emotionally and mentally, debilitatingly and heartbreakingly, the worst loss in school history.
“As a whole we cannot flatter ourselves, for the remembrance of the crushing defeat we received at Lehigh forcibly reminds us that our work in these lines needs better organization.”
– The Free Lance, December 1889
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