There is no elixir that can polish what this Penn State football season has turned into.
The list of adjectives that start with “disaster” and end with “failure” is too long – even for the modern infiniteness of the HTML code. In almost an indescribable fashion, Penn State’s 2025 season has fully fallen apart.
But the haze of the confusion from the shock of how this season has turned for Penn State hasn’t worn off yet.
As that haze still clouds, an unranked, winless-in-its-last-four-and-now-led-by-an-interim-head-coach Penn State gets ready to take on No. 1 Ohio State all of which is underlined by the fact that Saturday serves the first true reminder of what could have been.
This was supposed to be one of the biggest games on the entire college football calendar. For the final time until 2028, Penn State – with at worst one loss – would be squaring off with Ohio State, the defending national champion.
And while Ohio State is still holding up its end of the bargain, Penn State, as you know, is not.
Not that Penn State and Ohio State – even if it’s been one-sided since 2016 and even before that – isn’t always circled on the calendar but something about this year felt different. The Big Ten had started to shift key games like this one to later in the season in an effort to make moments like this matter more.
The game and the intrigue around the game was selected by the conference’s highest-paying rights holder as a guaranteed Big Noon matchup in a clear and obvious fashion this offseason. There was little doubt that this game would appear on any other network besides Fox, but instead of being the ratings darling because of its drama, it will only be a ratings grab in the voyeurism of a car crash that began in late September.
None of this is to say that Penn State can’t and won’t make things interesting on Saturday. There are four quarters of football to be played and four quarters of football to be played with a team that isn’t coached by James Franklin. Saturday may expose the fact that it was truly a Franklin problem.
But how all of this has unraveled is what has deflated all of the anticipation. Now, that anticipation has been almost fully replaced from the contingent in blue and white with anxiety.
Penn State – without the head coach it started the season with – must walk into the Horseshoe without the quarterback it started the season with due to injury. It too has to find a way to win with only one of its two darling running backs playing at the level at which many thought they’d both could play at. It will be accompanied by a passing game that heralded the arrival of several transfers to propel this team over the hump but instead sits 110th in the country in passing offense.
It must also head to Columbus with the Buckeyes’ former defensive coordinator, whose new defense ranks 81st in third-down stops nationally.
Every one of those stats and factoids is so far stretched from what could have been that it will make Saturday – regardless of outcome – a painful operation in just that.
Instead of being one of the most important college football games of the season, Penn State will have to recognize that it will instead be a game and a step toward reckoning with what just happened.
There hasn’t been much time for that between Franklin’s firing and now. Penn State’s loss to Iowa – while always a tough opponent – felt less insurmountable than what Penn State faces this weekend. There was so much commotion ahead of that game that there was hardly a moment to truly process how shattered the promise of 2025 has become. And for as poorly as this season has gone, a win on Saturday would in some ways be as frustrating as a likely loss will be.
The matchup with Ohio State offers the ability to reflect on that because that is – for the last several seasons – how Penn State seasons have truly been judged. The outcome of games against Ohio State, Michigan and now Oregon was a part of the undoing of Franklin. So when the anticipation of the promise of what could have been collapsed over the last few weeks, only when staring this moment in the face does a sense of longing for what could have been come about.
It’s a season that went from hope to lost in a matter of a few weeks. How Penn State got here and where Penn State goes from here will have a full offseason to be debated and pondered.
For now, Saturday feels like a moment where Penn State fans and Penn State’s team will get smacked with a moment of what could have been.
vs 
Time: 12 p.m.
TV: Fox
Announcers: Gus Johnson, Joel Klatt and Jenny Taft
Radio: Penn State Sports Network
Announcers: Steve Jones, Jack Ham, Brian Tripp
If you’ve enjoyed this content, please subscribe to Stuff Somers Says With Steve on YouTube. Or join our newsletter by entering your email below.
