Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1254482
P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> likely to resonate even with those who aren't eyeing an NFL career. Over the past few months, we've all had to figure out how to get by with less – less mobil- ity, less security, less community and, in many cases, less money. The pandemic has called on everyone to improvise. Many of us are doing our jobs from home and maintaining our relationships over the phone or through videoconfer- encing apps. That's a daunting task even for those whose jobs have always in- volved spending hours each day sitting at a desk staring at screens and drinking coffee. But it's especially daunting for athletes. Their jobs require physical proximity. They require training part- ners who boast comparable size and strength. The sloshbar is only going to take you so far. As of late May, it was still unclear when Menet, Fries and their fellow Nit- tany Lions would be able to resume practice. Penn State was hoping to begin reopening its campus later this summer, but those hopes were tentative, and the status of on-campus instruction was only the first of a hundred questions that will have to be answered before we'll know what kind of football season will be possible during the 2020-21 academic year. Will the testing capacity be suffi- cient to allow for a fall sea- son? If not, will there be a spring season? Will schools located in some of the na- tion's hardest-hit areas have to forgo football? Will con- ferences go forward even if some of their members aren't able to field teams? Will fans be permitted to attend games? With opening day only about three months away, the most fun- damental aspects of the season have not yet come into focus, and whatever deci- sions are made in the coming weeks will be provisional. What happens in August, September and beyond will be predicated on the course of the outbreak. Amid all this uncertainty, however, one thing does appear clear: The programs that will thrive after the pandemic has abated will be the ones whose players found workarounds that allowed them to con- tinue preparing, the ones whose coaches and leaders made sure that all this unstructured, unsuper- vised time was being put to good use. In recent months, whenever asked to discuss Penn State's approach the un- precedented difficulties brought on by the pandemic, James Franklin has cited a quote from former Intel CEO Andy Grove. Recounting the discovery of a flaw in an early Pentium processor in 1994, Grove famously said that bad companies are destroyed by crises, good companies survive them and great com- panies are improved by them. Intel's flawed chip became a huge PR headache, and the company had to issue a recall that ultimately cost nearly half a billion dollars. But in response, it put in place new quality-control measures that im- proved its products. During Grove's tenure as CEO, Intel's market capitaliza- tion went from $4 billion to $197 billion. It's a great company. By comparison, it's hard to see how anyone will emerge from the current sports shutdown in a better position. Makeshift weightlifting routines are no substitute for a college training program. Film study and online quizzes can't fully replace in-person practice reps. What's more, there's not really any good way for READY TO ROLL Franklin says that Penn State is fortu- nate to have "so many guys who are driven and moti- vated." Photo by Steve Manuel