Blue White Illustrated

PHIL'S CORNER Nittany Lions have pieces in place to surpass expectations this season hen the NCAA hit Penn State last July with what many college football observers felt was a death sentence, there were predictions that it would be a decade before the Nittany Lions could even think about being a top-25 program in the Football Bowl Subdivision. We all know what happened next. The Nittany Lions went 8-4 and won six of their eight Big Ten games, prompting three organizations to name Bill O'Brien their national Coach of the Year following the season. But college football is a what-haveyou-done-for-me-lately kind of business, and the focus of both fans and media has shifted to the 2013 season. What kind of expectations do people have for the Nittany Lions now that they've proven they can compete in the face of the NCAA's extremely harsh sanctions? Pretty much the same expectations as last year. It seems as if no one thinks Penn State will have any success in 2013, either. The rationale being used by those who expect Penn State to collapse is that the negative impact of the sanctions will begin to be felt this season, even if the NCAA's 65-scholarship limitation doesn't take effect until the beginning of the 2014 season. Penn State played the 2012 season with just 68 players on its scholarship roster, but it still seems inconceivable to many college football analysts that Penn State can remain competitive with what is essentially a six-year NCAA sanction that doesn't W allow participation in a bowl game until '16, limits Penn State to 15 scholarships per year until '17 and won't allow O'Brien to coach a team with an 85-man scholarship roster until the '18 season. Logic would seem to dictate that Penn State's success in 2012 was nothing more than an anomaly. It is something many college football analysts think just can't happen again during the 2013 season. But while that might be the conventional wisdom among college football analysts across the country, I can guarantee you those views are not shared by the players on Penn State's team. When you sit down and talk with any member of this team, what you see is a complete faith in O'Brien and his coaching staff. Players exude a feeling of confidence that they can endure most anything and still succeed. To them, the question of whether Penn State will have a successful 2013 football season is not open to discussion. "I think we're going to have a great season," senior center Ty Howle said after the Blue-White Game. "I wouldn't play the game if I didn't want to win, so obviously I think our goal is to win every game. We still have a lot of stuff to improve on, and I think we can do that." Even with the loss of leaders like Michael Mauti, Michael Zordich, Jordan Hill, Gerald Hodges, Matt McGloin and Stephon Morris, there are plenty of believers in the Penn State locker room. It's a belief system that encompasses every aspect of the football program, beginning with O'Brien. The Nittany Lions' second-year coach has strived to balance athletics and academics, and his faith in Penn State flows through his coaching staff to the players and becomes part of everyone's belief system, from the guys at the top of the depth chart to the behind-the-scenes staffers whose contributions aren't seen by the game day crowds. It's been that way ever since Blue White Illustrated began covering Penn State football in 1980. The Nittany Lions used a balanced approach that years earlier had been dubbed the Grand Experiment. When it administered its sanctions last summer, the NCAA essentially decreed the Grand Experiment to be a failed experiment. President Mark Emmert said Penn State's football culture had run amok and had deviated from the school's educational mission. He said its culture was corrupt and needed to be completely overhauled. Personally, I think Emmert didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about when he attacked Penn State's academic values. It seems to me that O'Brien and his coaching staff have maintained the balance between academics and excellence on the football field that has existed at Penn State since Rip Engle became head coach in 1950 and brought Joe Paterno along with him. Over a 62-year period leading up to the announcement of the NCAA sanctions, Penn State was one of only four major-conference programs that hadn't been cited by the NCAA for a major rules violation. Emmert's predecessor, Myles Brand, described Penn State as a model athletic program with the ideal balance of academics and sports. What the NCAA sanctions seem to have done, however, has been to strengthen the bond that existed between academic excellence at Penn State and the dream of its players have of playing in the NFL. In fact, it's the No. 1 reason why I believe Penn State, under O'Brien's

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