The Tartan

As regular Tartan readers might know, I hail from the small Appalachian college town of State College, Pennsylvania and have spent my life an avid Penn State football fan. But ten years ago, Penn State football — and State College more generally — was a powder keg.

A few years prior, the biggest story in the history of college athletics, and certainly the biggest story in the history of our quiet little town, had exploded. It emerged that a former defensive coordinator and current retiree — a trusted member of the community who spent his time volunteering in schools and working with foster and at-risk youth — had been running what can only be described as a personal child molestation ring since at least 1976. He would go on to be convicted of 45 counts, but the real number was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, orders of magnitude higher. He was imprisoned and an investigation was quickly launched into what turned out to be a passive, but massive, cover-up by the university. It engulfed everyone from assistants in the football program to the athletic director to the president, and even the beloved head coach of forty-five years, Joe Paterno. The head coach was fired, and then died; the athletic director, a senior vice president, and even the university president himself all wound up in prison, and Penn State was handed down the harshest penalty in NCAA history, banning scholarships and bowl games for four years and effectively neutering the team.

We responded to trauma the only way humankind knows how — by turning inwards, deepening our bonds as a community, and pledging to get through it together while caring for the hundreds or even thousands of young adults and children who had been harmed by this monster of a man.

Just kidding. The town fractured bitterly in two. Signs went up in windows across town, loyally declaring themselves “PROUD TO SUPPORT PENN STATE FOOTBALL.” Professors, angry that the focus was on sports and not on the top-notch academic institute to which they gave their careers, responded with a barrage of signs reading “PROUD TO SUPPORT PENN STATE ACADEMICS.” The blame game escalated, with the adults in the town roping themselves to an institution of their choosing and hurling barbs at all comers, in a discussion that became less about the abuse scandal and more about the priorities of the town and university. Lost in the shuffle was the massive population of damaged children, the ones this was all supposedly about. Not once, in all the years of this dogfight, did a sign reading “PROUD TO SUPPORT STATE COLLEGE MIDDLE SCHOOLERS” adorn a window.

In late 2014, the NCAA lifted Penn State’s bowl ban, and the program began a slow return to relevance, playing in low-level postseason games both that year and in 2015. 2016, which was supposed to be the first year that Penn State was once again eligible for bowl games, turned out to be a breakout season. Under new coach James Franklin, the team won ten games, including a huge victory over Ohio State that brought down the house so loud that thirteen-year-old me could hear the roar of the crowd from my bedroom on the other side of town. The Nittany Lions won the Big Ten but barely missed the playoff that year, and all eyes turned to 2017, with a strengthened roster and newly emboldened hopes.

That year, 7-0 Penn State, ranked second in the country, had the College Football Playoff within sight; the only remaining tough games were on the road against Ohio State and Michigan State. A single win in those two games would all but ensure Penn State an 11-1 regular season and a chance to play for the Big Ten title, punching their ticket to the playoffs. And indeed, it started out well, and with ten minutes to go, Penn State had a fifteen-point lead and the ball. How did that end? I bet you can imagine. The doom and gloom from the near-win continued to the next week, and a 27-24 loss in East Lansing; that year, the Nits finished third in the Big Ten East and missed the playoffs, ranked #8 by season’s end.

In 2018, 4-0 and ranked ninth, Penn State invited Ohio State to town; for most of the day, the Buckeyes imploded on Beaver Stadium’s finely cut grass. With seven minutes left, the good guys were on top by a 26-14 margin. And how did that one end? Yep. For the second straight year, Penn State lost by a single point. This time, it was followed up by two more losses to wrap up a rough season, going 9-3 and then losing the Citrus Bowl to Kentucky.

In 2019, ninth-ranked Penn State, with just one loss, went to Columbus knowing that a win would, in all likelihood, lock them in the playoffs. They proceeded to soil themselves in front of a hundred thousand screaming Ohioans, and returned to State College, hat in hand, the next day. Second in the Big Ten East. Put up fifty-three in the Cotton Bowl. All great. But by this point, it was becoming clear that the road to the playoffs ran through Ohio, and that this team may well be cursed.

2020 was the first year in four that a brutal loss to Ohio State wasn’t what kept the Nittany Lions from the playoffs. No, that year, a 38-25 loss to the Buckeyes at home was only one of the many, many reasons that Penn State did not make the playoffs. They lost their first five games, the worst start in program history, and finished 4-5. After the season, the university’s athletic director announced that the school was removing itself from consideration for bowl games out of concern for the health of players during the pandemic. Cute, but ultimately unnecessary. Who was going to invite a four-win laughingstock to a respectable game?

I will not be discussing the 2021 season. If you want to learn about Penn State’s year, just Google “crazy psu choke vs iowa” or “longest college football game ever” and you’ll get a sense for the pain we endured that year. I will just mention that the Nittany Lions started 5-0 and ranked fourth in the country, and wrapped up by losing for the sixth time in the Outback Bowl.

But last year — 2022 — there was hope. Penn State was good — not great, but good. After winning five straight to start the season, the Lions went to Ann Arbor, ready to make some noise. Instead, they got the crap beat out of them. Sean Clifford completed seven passes all day. The Nittany Lions allowed 563 yards. Had the ball for eighteen minutes, and so on, and so on. The final score was an embarrassing 41-17, but it never really felt that close. Yet the team recovered, and invited Ohio State to town as the thirteenth-ranked team in the country.

I pay particular mind to the 2022 game only because I remember watching it so vividly. My computer had broken earlier in the year, and I hadn’t been able to get it fixed yet, meaning that I was reliant on the big, bulky machines that filled the computer labs in Baker Hall to do my homework. When the Buckeyes descended on my hometown to play our beloved Nittany Lions, there was no question in my mind that I would watch it, so I woke up on Saturday morning and caught the bus to campus, logged into the computers, and sat down to watch a six-year curse finally break.

It was a tight game. With nine minutes left, the Nits were on top, 21-16, and I could feel the stadium pulsating even across the hundred-odd miles of my self-imposed exile. Despite the Michigan loss, I knew the same thing that everyone in the stadium knew, namely, that nobody was all that good this year. With a win against Ohio State, Penn State could end up 11-1, with a great, quality win to balance out the Michigan loss, and slip into the playoffs. We were nine minutes away from pandemonium. And though dampened, my spirits remained high when TreVeyon Henderson broke through the Penn State lines and scampered forty-one yards for a touchdown, putting Ohio State back in the driver’s seat by a pair of points.

But then, Sean Clifford was strip-sacked by Ohio State defensive end J.T. Tuimoloau; the next play, C.J. Stroud hit Cade Stover for a long touchdown to extend the lead to nine. Penn State marched down the field to kick a field goal with five minutes to play, making it 30-24, and meaning, if they could get a stop, the game wasn’t over. They did not get a stop. And finally, down thirteen and in desperation mode as he tried to march down the field, Clifford heaved it to the only man he could see. Unfortunately, it was Tuimoloau. And to put it nicely, things spiraled from there.

I sat in a state of shock for what could have been ten minutes, or could have been four hours. I’m not sure. All I know is that, when the dust settled, two things had happened. One, Penn State had been stymied again, and wound up taking it out on Utah in the Rose Bowl. And two, Ohio State — the perpetual pain in our collective asshole — was back in the playoff.

Last weekend, we lost again. And this football team has done too good a job burning me out for me to write about it. Ohio State 20, Penn State 12, final.

This year’s loss to the Buckeyes was particularly sad, as 2023 is the last season of college football as we know it. Next year, as a consequence (or a stimulus) of the collapse of the Pac-12, the Big Ten will add four teams on the West Coast, expanding from fourteen teams to eighteen and doing away with divisions in the process. As a result, after thirty-three straight years, Penn State’s annual faceoffs against Ohio State and Michigan will be no more. There will still be tough games every season, but it won’t be a consistent gauntlet — it’ll be against Oregon, or USC, or Washington. And second, the College Football Playoff will expand in 2024 from four teams to twelve, meaning that two-loss teams will be viable in the playoffs for the first time. So say hello to 2022 Penn State, 2019 Penn State, 2017 Penn State. Lost to the Buckeyes? Check. In anyway? You betcha.

This deserves an article of its own at some point, so I won’t go into any great detail here. But under the current format — where Penn State probably needs to run the Big Ten to make the playoff, and needs to beat Ohio State and Michigan to run the Big Ten — the season every year is the same formidable gauntlet. They’ve become familiar adversaries, hated, sure, but respected. It’s why we always knew it would feel so sweet when we finally did it. And it’s why it’s saddening to know that, thanks to these massive changes, we never will. The new system will be cool, don’t get me wrong. But I really wish we could’ve solved the old one just once first.

But I don’t want to lose sight of the broader context here. Ever since the nauseating revelations of child sex abuse in the early 2010s, Penn State football and the Borough of State College are inextricably linked. We cannot tell the story of one without the other. In the immediate aftermath of the restoration of Penn State’s bowl privileges in 2014, still sickened, a huge portion of the town was adamantly against the Nittany Lions — cheering losses, and rooting for the program’s complete collapse. When Penn State beat Ohio State in 2016, and went on to win the Big Ten, an outpouring of emotional young people flooded College Avenue, capping a night they’ll never forget. Livid, many residents — even those unaffected who lived far from downtown, or at least as far as you can get in a town our size — complained to the Borough Council about it. In my mind, the root of the feeling was a total disgust that anyone would feel joy at the success of a team which, just a few years previously, had been proven to have partaken in a massive coverup to protect a coach who was molesting children. And who can blame them? To the students, most of whom had only the faintest knowledge of the horror, it was just a party because their team won. But the gross feeling, to those who knew the history, was undeniable.

Yet over the next seven years, something changed. I don’t know what, and I don’t know when, but this year, the town seems to be almost united behind the Nittany Lions. Of course, I don’t want to stretch the truth too far. Many are apathetic, and there are still, I’m sure, a few who are rooting against the team on principle. But the signs in the windows and that ugly culture war of the early 2010s are gone. And by and large, if Penn State beats Michigan in two weeks and finds a way to sneak into the playoff, there will be hardly a soul in town — even those who couldn’t care less about football — who doesn’t feel just the softest tinge of hometown pride.

At the end of the day, we haven’t had a whole lot to be proud of lately. It’s still a wonderful place to live, with great schools, kind people, and a plethora of natural beauty. I was raised by New York expats, surrounded by drunk college students and Amish horse-and-buggies, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But I would dare you, if you ever feel the urge to drive out to Happy Valley, to find a single person who will call themselves proud to be from State College. It’s not that people are ashamed of it, or even that people don’t like living there, because neither of those things are true. There’s just not much people can point to that makes them swell with pride, and not shrug their shoulders, when asked where they’re from.

Now, I know that this article has been about two different topics — the seven-year curse against Ohio State, and the scar left on my community by the thirty-five year rampage of a sexual predator. And yes, I know. One of those topics is significantly more important than the other. But they aren’t as distinct as you might think. Penn State football has been — reliably — the only thing that can land State College in the spotlight. The last time it happened, it was for reasons that we all wish, in vain, we could forget. But if the pieces all finally came together, we’d be back in the spotlight, and this time, it would be all smiles.

But that can’t happen. Not without beating those damned Buckeyes. I don’t know how much it’ll do for the kids whose personal hell was smeared all over national news, but it might, just might, be what it takes to put the finishing touches on patching a divided community back together.

We Are.

(Author’s Note: Yes, I will be writing something more fun next week.)