Penn State Sports Magazine
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6 N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 4 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M T hroughout the first half of the 2024 college football season, the lessons came hot and heavy. Mike Norvell kicked off the chaos when he learned in a season-opening loss to Georgia Tech that his Florida State team had issues. Unfortunately for the Seminoles, who went a stagger- ing 13-0 last season before missing the College Football Playoff when quar- terback Jordan Travis broke his leg, the lesson was that the nightmare was just getting started. Nearly two months later, the preseason No. 10 team in the country sat at 1-6 on the year. In Week 2, it was Marcus Freeman's turn. His Notre Dame Fighting Irish, 4-touchdown favorites against North- ern Illinois, found themselves in a scrap with the visiting Huskies. A blocked field goal ended any Irish magic, and it put Notre Dame behind the eight ball, even in the newly expanded playoff. Top-10 teams Kansas State, Utah and Ole Miss felt the sting of the upset over the next month, but nothing could have prepared the college football world for what awaited it on Oct. 5. No. 1 Alabama, a machine for much of the past two decades under Nick Saban, went to what the Hall of Fame coach called the easiest place to play in the SEC. The night ended with thousands of Vanderbilt students flooding the field in the sport's most improbable upset in years. There was a lesson waiting for new Crimson Tide head coach Kalen De- Boer, who lost his first game on the sideline of the storied program. "Stay the course," DeBoer said the next day. "That's what the message is to the team. Stay the course, but every- thing is always about digesting what happened, having some perspective and having the answers for the guys." Alabama learned quite a lesson on that Saturday in Nashville. It's one that, as a program that is likely to get the benefit of the doubt come playoff time, the Tide could afford to learn … for now. Unfortunately, two weeks later Alabama returned to the Volunteer State and took its second loss, falling to Tennessee. The Tide's schedule still includes trips to LSU and Oklahoma, as well as the Iron Bowl against an Auburn team that would like nothing better than to spoil DeBoer's inaugural season. It demands perfection for a team that's clearly not hitting on all cylinders. In the current format, 12 teams will make the College Football Playoff. Sev- eral spots will be up for grabs after the season as the committee painstakingly dissects and overanalyzes everything from the previous months. How does a team avoid that? Just win, baby. Penn State started its season 6-0. The toughest part of the schedule lies ahead, but the Nittany Lions were in a good spot heading into the second half of the campaign. Of course, James Franklin's squad made its escape from L.A. with an overtime win over USC and rebuffed Bowling Green's upset bid back in September. The Lions haven't been perfect, but that mattered less at the halfway point than the zero in the loss column. Georgia, Ohio State, Texas, Tennes- see, LSU, Clemson and Notre Dame were all top-12 teams that could not say the same. The margin for error among that group is quite a bit smaller than Penn State's. The Nittany Lions haven't necessar- ily won pretty. Through six games, they were just 2-4 against the spread, which is a metric in which the team had a 9-3 record in each of the past two seasons. Still, the simplest common de- nominator remains. If the Lions keep winning, the committee won't have a reason to keep them out. It's always been like this, to a degree, but how Penn State wins isn't nearly as important as if Penn State wins. "Coming off a win, there's good vibes. There's good mojo," Franklin said during the bye week. "We got a chance to still learn and teach and grow after a win, which I think is a really im- portant skill and tool for us all to learn. You shouldn't need a setback to take a step forward, to have the maturity to work on the things that you need to improve on. "I think the staff is approaching it that way. I think that the players are approaching it that way." Were the Nittany Lions the third- best team in the country coming out of Week 8? The AP and coaches' polls said so, but frankly, it doesn't matter. We'll all see how PSU stacks up when Ohio State comes to town. Heading into the Wisconsin game on Oct. 26, the zero in the loss column meant far more than the ranking. The Nittany Lions were one of 10 unde- feated teams left in the country, and in one of the wackiest and most fun sea- sons in recent memory, learning les- sons in close wins beats taking a "good loss" any day of the week. ■ James Franklin believes that learning and growth should occur after wins as well as losses. "You shouldn't need a setback to take a step forward," he said. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL Penn State Gives Itself Some Margin For Error JUDGMENT CALL O P I N I O N SEAN FITZ SEAN.FITZ@ON3.COM