A year ago at this time, all the talk was national championship or bust for the Penn State football team.
From Penn State Athletics, among the fanbase and with regional and national media the storyline was consistent.
Now, nobody anticipated the big bust it became, but the lofty expectations were clear and consistent — and the fans, especially the fans, embraced all of it. It was time. Success was overdue. If it was success with honor, fine, but in the pay-for-pay NIL era simple success would’ve been embraced.
A year later, so much has changed.
It’s clearly not that time anymore — and the fans generally seem on board with that mindset.
Patience has generally replaced expectations.
The coaching change (goodbye James, hello Matt) has reset things a bit.
The temporary seats on the west side of Beaver Stadium will be gone this season, replaced by the permanent seats as the $700 million renovation plan moves closer to its completion. At the same time, there’s no big, shared public expectation that the on-field renovations have moved beyond where they were last season. Or that they’re even that advanced.
After all the outcry entering last season, all the pent-up, just-missed-it, lost-the-big-game frustration that defined everything, there’s suddenly a bit more rainbows-and-unicorns patience for the blue-and-white faithful entering this season.
We’re six Saturdays away from Penn State’s first victory of the season (Sept. 5 vs. Marshall) and it’s like the season is sneaking up on everyone. There’s been no angst about temporary seats, how high they are and if things will fall underneath them; there’s little concern about when the White Out will happen (it needs to be Oct. 10 vs. USC); and the transition from Nike to adidas has taken place, albeit with some fits and starts.
There’s the promise of an updated sound system in the stadium, which would be wonderful, and it’s clear the soft nonconference schedule should ensure a 3-0 start before Penn State plays its first meaningful game Sept. 26 vs. Wisconsin at Beaver Stadium.
There’s sure to be energy in the stadium when the season opens, even against outmatched Marshall and similarly soft Buffalo (Sept. 19), and that fan-driven energy should travel to Temple (Sept. 12) for a victory, too.
Without the expectation-driven energy, though, it certainly feels different than last season.
For some, Matt Campbell might make the program and team more likeable than it was under James Franklin. Maybe that’s part of it (even if any truth associated with that outlook certainly comes with a slight tinge of certain-colored glasses) but no matter the reason it’ll just be interesting to see how long it all lasts.
Maybe the less-touted Nittany Lions, many of them formerly Iowa State Cyclones, will endear themselves with their hard work, play well together and perform at a level that reaffirms the need for expectations.
If not, will fans slough it off as the first year of what will be an all-new approach that eventually leads to different results?
What if, though, it’s a perfectly fine, enjoyable and successful team and that becomes the on-field model moving forward? After all, that’s generally been the case since 1986 — when Penn State last won a national championship. Expectations or not, and across multiple coaching regimes, what Penn State has done the past four decades has generally been the same for the past four decades.
Really good, but not quite great and not elite.
The response to that played poorly last season — admittedly after a decade of similar results. It’ll just be interesting if the same results from different people get a different response this season.
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