We did it, everyone.
We made it.
The offseason that began roughly around 2 p.m. on Oct. 12, 2025 has finally reached its long, windy, cookie-crumbed end.
It wasn’t, in essence, a tiring offseason. The problems that made it an initially exhausting offseason were all squared away by early December.
But this offseason lingered like a 35:23-minute audio recording — occasionally interrupted by a podcaster from Ohio.
There were long nights scouring message board rumors, deciphering if we really trust some guy who posts curiously at the same time big news is about to break. There was a 24-hour stretch where a cookie company CEO was the most powerful man in college football. There was an Instagram account that seemed to be printing enough signs to keep a FedEx Office in business.
There was The Button.
A $700 million stadium renovation that is still not done but is also done enough to create some change on gamedays. And there’s a new logo before another logo probably gets added to Penn State’s uniforms.
So much stuff has happened since the last time Penn State kicked off a football season but eventually like every offseason, this one has come to an end.
We did it.
We made it to a new year, and at the end of the finish line is another set of seven Saturdays in State College — or however many you’re going to be able to get to this season.
The reward includes the smell of bacon grease hanging in the air long after McDonald’s stops serving breakfast, the feel of dewy, unmowed but slightly chewed on by local bovine grass seeping through your sneakers and that one guy with the 1970s speakers hooked up to a car battery playing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Tuesday’s Gone” for the third time in the last two hours.
These seven Saturdays are unequivocally the best days of the year even when they end on an interception in overtime.
The end of this offseason offers a sense of optimism that is quite different from last year’s sense of optimism that vanished in the late hours of last September. Last year’s was about potential that probably never was really there to begin with. This year’s optimism is seeded on change that a fresh start for everyone involved will be what’s truly best for Penn State football.
There haven’t been too many offseasons like this one. There haven’t been many Saturdays like this first one in Happy Valley.
But even in spite of that change, the prize waiting for all of us – besides cold beer, grilled cheese sandwiches and someone (definitely not me) losing in cornhole for the fifth straight time – is truly what makes college football and Penn State football more specifically, the best.
We have waited for Saturday for quite some time. We have been waiting for Saturday for quite some time. We are still – unless you’re reading this after 3:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday – waiting for Saturday for quite some time.
That wait, though, is worth it.
I have firmly come to believe that this is about football but it is all also not about football. And that’s what I love the most about all of this. It’s cliched. I’ve probably written the same thing before, and this piece offers you no insights as to what I think will happen on the field come Saturday afternoon. But it is so unbelievably hard not to feel wrapped up and embraced by the sense of community and the sense of belonging that Penn State – and even college football – offers.
It – like whatever is in that flask that probably hasn’t been cleaned out since last season – is intoxicating.
This is the time we get to cherish all of the things that make this time of year the best.
So that’s why it’s fair to celebrate the fact that we made it to the end of this long offseason that I don’t want to watch Penn State go through again anytime soon.
It was without a doubt one of the most fascinating college football soap operas that has played out. I enjoyed every twist and turn. But now it’s time to play out a season of 12 football games and hopefully a few more.
Penn State football, my friends, is back.
We did it.
vs 
Time: 3:30 p.m.
TV: FS1
Announcers: Jack Kizer, Mark Helfrich
Radio: Penn State Sports Network
Announcers: Steve Jones, Jack Ham, Brian Tripp
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