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P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> head, who revived Fordham's offense before doing the same in his first season at Penn State, has demonstrated throughout his career that he knows ex- actly what he's doing. But the perception that their showing last season was fluky and possibly un- sustainable is one that the Nittany Lions are going to have to fight in 2017, and not just on offense. For all the victories they piled up last year, for all the respect they've gotten in recent weeks, as evi- denced by their No. 6 ranking in the Amway Coaches Poll, their first presea- son top-10 ranking since the 2009 sea- son, the Lions remain a team with a lot to prove. Penn State is only five years removed from the imposition of major NCAA sanctions. While those penalties didn't devastate the program to the degree that many anticipated back in the summer of 2012, they did ensure that it wouldn't be a factor in the Big Ten title chase for a while, to say nothing of the national championship. And even before the sanctions, Penn State was only an inter- mittent presence in the national spot- light, finishing in the Associated Press top 10 just seven times in Joe Paterno's last 25 seasons. So while those of us who've been fol- lowing the program for decades tend to benchmark it against the glory years of Paterno's reign, when the team could be counted on to produce undefeated Do you say anything to a team that's coming back from an 11-3 season that's di'erent from what you would say to a team coming back from a 7-6 season? No, and I think you guys have probably heard me talk about this enough all o<- season. I'd make the opposite argument that you need to stay consistent with your plan. You need to stay consistent with your message. We do the same thing all year long. I make the argument that it's no dih- team on the o

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