James Franklin, whose coaching job at Vanderbilt in 2012 and 2013 remains arguably the best of this young century, and whose absence from coach-of-the-year lists in those years should have caused the shutdown of those awards, plus all other football awards, plus all national-awards TV shows — no, especially all national-awards TV shows — expressed a polite weariness on Tuesday.
Ahead of the Penn State-Michigan game coming Saturday, he keeps getting questions about the Penn State-Michigan game of Sept. 24, 2016, and he doesn’t think that one relates much to this one. He doesn’t peg that 49-10 beating as any more of a factor than a bushel of other factors in Penn State’s mind-altering 15-1 upturn ever since.
In an intra-Penn State sense, he’s indubitable. He knows the football team he coaches day upon day.
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In a whole-world sense, he’s shortsighted. That dismal game retold a lesson useful to anybody trying to do anything:
Often, you’re not as far away as it seems.
Look where the hyperactive college football spotlight has settled just now for a two-week stay: It’s the giant Pennsylvanian theater that might have gone dark after a peerless scandal six years ago, and it’s the giant Pennsylvanian theater that, in terms strictly football, seemed a ludicrous long shot for any such spotlight almost 400 days ago.
For the next two Saturdays, here’s Penn State and its old, two-pronged gantlet: home to Michigan, then at Ohio State. This puzzle goes way back in Penn State history, all the way to the ancient days of 1993, when the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten as a pup — no, actually, as a bull mastiff. They began 5-0, 2-0 in the league. They won 31-0 at Iowa. They beat two future Big Ten teams, Rutgers and Maryland, in a vain attempt to scare those teams from ever joining the Big Ten.
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Then Michigan came to town, outfoxed and outmuscled Penn State on a goal-line stand, won 21-13, and had running back Tyrone Wheatley snootily refer to a Big Ten debutant having to pay its “dues.” Then Penn State took a week off and went to Ohio State and took a 24-6 beatdown in late-October Columbus snow, after which an Ohio State player said that, preparation-wise, Penn State was “no more important than Purdue or Northwestern or any other Big Ten team.”
Note: The next year, Penn State went 12-0, went 8-0 in the Big Ten, beat Ohio State, 63-14, and finished ranked No. 2 in the nation.
Now that the Nittany Lions have re-alighted at No. 2 this week, it’s helpful in life to remember the statistics of Sept. 24, 2016, just for their uncommon atrocity.
Penn State got 12 first downs. It got 191 total yards. It rushed 28 times for 70 yards. Michigan got 515 total yards, six sacks and 11 third-down conversions out of 16 tries. Multiple media outlets quoted Michigan quarterback Wilton Speight as saying: “We called the same play eight times in a row. I started laughing looking at the play call.”
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Where two weeks prior, Pittsburgh had rushed for a harrowing 341 yards in a 42-39 victory over Penn State, Michigan chimed in with a harrowing 326. Three injured starting linebackers couldn’t play for the Nittany Lions. A fourth linebacker got tossed for targeting. A fifth replaced the fourth, got injured and couldn’t play the rest of the year. Franklin’s record stood at 16-14 across two-plus seasons, and 0-7 against the three intradivisional colossi (Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State), including two routs by 39 points each (to the Michigan teams) and another by 28 (to Ohio State). David Jones of PennLive.com said on video of the rout by the Wolverines, “I’ve got to say that’s one of the most dispiriting losses I’ve ever seen this program take, in 26 years of doing this.”
One week later, Penn State trailed Minnesota 23-20 with 43 seconds left, and faced third down and 10 from its own 25-yard line.
Backing up to his own 13, quarterback Trace McSorley launched a back-footed throw up the middle to a lunging Chris Godwin for 20 yards.
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Moments later, McSorley scrambled for 26, enabling a game-tying Tyler Davis field goal.
Now, this?
Penn State is 15-1 in its last 16, the lone loss by 52-49 to Southern California in a kaleidoscopic Rose Bowl. It won its second outright Big Ten title. Franklin has inched up to 2-7 against the three leviathans, beating Ohio State (if not physically) and beating Michigan State (thoroughly). In the meantime, marvel at running back Saquon Barkley’s 2017 national ranking in all-purpose yards: 1.
The Lions’ national scoring-defense ranking this season: 1. Total-defense ranking: 9. Yards-per-play-defense ranking: 4.
What a lousy position into which to hurl that subset of your fan base that had concluded you’re no good.
“Everybody kind of wants me to say that that [Michigan game] was like the ‘aha’ moment,” Franklin said. “And don’t get me wrong. Obviously, I do think it was a factor. But like I say with a lot of things, there’s 25 slices in this pie. And the Michigan loss last year was a factor. Development was a factor. Players taking responsibility and accountability was a factor. The coaches building relationships and chemistry with the players was a factor. I could list out a number of things and every single one of them is important.”
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Here’s another factor: sports, sometimes horrible, often wonderful and occasionally ready to remind us of something worthwhile.
More college football:
Two standouts could’ve left Virginia at a low point. They returned for a revival.
Not so fast, my friend: A stroke couldn’t rob Lee Corso of ‘GameDay’
As Tennessee football slides, ‘Fire Butch Jones’ threatens to drown out ‘Rocky Top’
Analysis: Ohio State controls its playoff fate after a weekend of upsets
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