Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/787374
News' "way-too-early" top 25, pub- lished on Feb. 1, had the Lions seventh, noting that they will feature a pair of Heisman Trophy candidates in red- shirt junior quarterback Trace McSor- ley and junior running back Saquon Barkley. "Penn State will be in con- tention for the Big Ten East champi- onship again," writer Bill Bender predicted. Meanwhile, Fox Sports had the Lions' sixth in its preliminary rankings, while ESPN had them fourth. Their highest ranking came courtesy of Sports Illus- trated, which placed them third behind Alabama and Southern California. "Three years into a full allotment of scholarships, the Nittany Lions will be deeper and better," SI noted. Franklin is taking none of this very seriously, including the polls to which people will eventually be paying atten- tion. The Nittany Lions' preseason ranking, whatever it may be in August, "means little to nothing," he said. "End-of-the-year rankings are what matter. "I do think we had some experiences last year that are going to be motivat- ing factors for us moving forward. Certain games where we didn't play as well as we should have played, having conversations about whether we would be in the playoffs or not, being that close and not getting in, are moti- vators. How the bowl game ended is a motivator. So there are things out there, and there's only really one team that's happy at the end of the season." The bowl game in question was, of course, the Rose. It was wildly enter- taining, but the Lions squandered a two-touchdown lead in the fourth quarter, and USC escaped with a 51-48 victory. As Franklin traveled around the country – he flew from Alabama to California to Michigan during one lengthy recruiting trip in mid-January – the people with whom he talked often brought up how much they en- joyed the game. "I had everybody coming up to me saying, 'Wow, Coach, best bowl game I've ever seen. Unbelievable.' I said, 'It wasn't that darned good.' I understand from an entertainment standpoint it was awesome," he said. "But we didn't win the game." Nor did McSorley go out the way he wanted to. The final pass of his breath- taking debut season as the team's starting quarterback was intercepted by Leon McQuay, setting up the Tro- jans' winning field goal. Franklin said McSorley deals with football's ups and downs analytically rather than emo- tionally and expects him to draw les- sons from the Lions' loss. "What we're going to do between now and next year is say, how can we take the amount of times that he maybe made decisions that he would prefer to make differently in the future and limit them?" Franklin said. "Say 12 percent of the time last year he made decisions that he would have made dif- ferently looking back at it. How can we take that and reduce it to maybe 8 per- cent or 6 percent next year, and kind of keep heading in that direction?" For Franklin, it's all part of the pro- gram-building process that he began when he took over in 2014. His third season was a breakthrough, as Penn State finished 11-3 overall and 8-1 in the conference. But for all the success, the Lions left plenty of room for im- provement, too. "We have things that we should be very proud of, and for our guys, they should be confidence-building experi- ences," Franklin said. "But we also have things that I think should be mo- tivating. The way I look at it, there's one happy team at the end of the year, and that's [national champion] Clem- son and my boy Dabo [Swinney]. Everybody else is salty and angry and ready to get back to work again. "We've got a lot of work that we still need to do in every area possible. I can guarantee you with the leadership on our team and the coaches on our team, we'll have a long discussion about that... and [about] who we want to be and where we want to go and what sacrifices we are willing to make to get there." ■ Penn State loses DTs, as White, Thrift transfer The defensive line, one of Penn State's deeper position groups last season, got a bit thinner in January when tackles An- toine White and Brenon Thrift an- nounced they were transferring. After three years at Penn State, White is leaving for the University of Albany. Standing 6-foot-2, 290 pounds, he played in all 14 games as a redshirt soph- omore this past season, finishing with 17 tackles and 1.5 sacks. He was listed be- hind Curtis Cothran at the three-tech- nique tackle spot on the Nittany Lions' Rose Bowl depth chart, but with Cothran returning for his senior season, and Kevin Givens having emerged as a major contributor at the position, it appeared as though White's role was not going to expand substantially in 2017. In announcing his decision via Twitter on Jan. 16, the Millville, N.J., native thanked coach James Franklin along with his Penn State teammates and the rest of the university community. "My past 3 years at Penn State have been filled with so many great experiences as a student- athlete, in school, sports, as well as in life," he wrote. "I am forever grateful for all of those, and I have built relationships that I know will last a lifetime. The fans are truly the most devoted in the country and make Game Day for any player spe- cial. Happy Valley will always have a spe- cial place in my heart, and Penn State will forever be a part of who I am." White came to Penn State in January 2014. He had committed to Bill O'Brien, with defensive line coach Larry Johnson taking the lead in his recruitment. When Johnson left for Ohio State after the staff changeover that followed O'Brien's exit, White briefly reconsidered his commit- ment but ended up enrolling anyway, ar- riving on campus two days after Franklin was officially announced as head coach. After redshirting in his first year on F O O T B A L L