Blue White Illustrated

P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> they slipped out of contention for the playoff, their quarterback saw his Heis- man hopes fade. But whatever the postseason may bring – he was recently named a semifi- nalist for the Maxwell Award, which goes to the nation's top college player – it's indisputable that McSorley has had a major impact on Penn State during his three starting seasons. With the possible exception of Saquon Barkley, he has been the most important figure in the Nittany Lions' turnaround, not just as the guy who makes the offense go, but as the personification of the values that Franklin has strived to instill. One of those values is to maintain a positive attitude in the face of life's challenges. As he showed when he re- turned to the game against the Hawkeyes, and again when he bounced back from a crushing sack that briefly knocked him out of the Lions' game against Wisconsin, McSorley has done exactly that. "I think that's something that I've al- ways kind of had," he said recently. "My mom will talk about how, when I was a kid, she would be like, 'Don't you ever get mad and want to kick something.' … So that's just always how I've been. It's just kind of my personality. The things you can't control, there's no sense in getting upset about them or letting them start to affect you, because then they start to af- fect the things that you can control. Coach Franklin talks about that all the time in our program – controlling the controllables. That's something I think I've been able to do pretty well when things don't go our way, or when things do kind of bounce our way – being able to take the positives and the negatives that you can't control and work with them and just focus on things you can." It's not surprising that McSorley and Franklin have turned out to be simpatico. They've known each other for nearly six years, having first met at a junior day event at Vanderbilt. Franklin was getting ready for his third season with the Commodores, and he and his quarterbacks coach, Ricky Rahne, had an edge over some of the other schools that were pur- suing the three-star Virginia prospect because they thought he would be a pretty good college QB. A lot of those other schools thought he would be bet- ter off at safety. McSorley wanted to play offense, so he committed to Vanderbilt the day after he returned home from the school's football camp, and he stayed committed until Franklin took the Penn State job the following January. Within a week of Franklin's introductory presser, McSorley was on campus for a visit. Be- fore leaving town, he had switched to the Nittany Lions. Franklin signed an- other quarterback in that hectic first month on the job, landing Michael O'Connor, a holdover from the class that Bill O'Brien had been putting together before returning to the NFL. O'Connor had earned a four-star rating at IMG Academy in Florida and was everything a college coach could want in a quarterback prospect. He was a Ri- vals250 player, ranked seventh nation- ally at his position, and was coming off an eight-win season at IMG. In addition to all that, he just plain looked the part. At 6-foot-5, 225 pounds, he was five inches taller than McSorley and 35 pounds heavier. If you had asked the av- erage Penn State follower at the time which of the team's two new quarter- back recruits was destined to become a three-year starter and Heisman Trophy hopeful, O'Connor would surely have been the choice. McSorley was unfazed. "It wasn't a big thing for me," he said at the time. "Michael is one of the highest-rated guys and a great quarterback. I'm look- SCARY MOMENT McSorley had to be helped off the field by members of the train- ing staff after his right knee was injured in the second quarter against Iowa. Photo by Bill Anderson

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