Blue White Illustrated

P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> same season. The Lions thrashed the Wolverines, 42-13, in October, but then they faltered at Ohio State the following week. The 39-38 loss to the Buckeyes was probably the most heartbreaking on-field moment of the post-Paterno era. Penn State wasn't able to hold onto a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter and was ejected from the College Football Playoff race following that loss and an- other to Michigan State a week later. Given the stratospheric preseason ex- pectations, any loss to Ohio State was going to sting. But this one was espe- cially painful in that Penn State squan- dered several opportunities to put the game away. Still, there's another way of looking at the Lions' disappointing af- ternoon in Columbus. Ever since Penn State began trending upward last Octo- ber, there's been talk of how James Franklin has brought a feeling of nor- malcy back to the program in the wake of the Sandusky scandal and the imposi- tion of major NCAA sanctions. It's meant as a compliment, but in some ways, it undersells what he and his staff have accomplished in their four seasons. For much of the past few decades, Penn State hasn't had the kind of team that could go into Columbus and build a lead of any kind. In its previous two vis- its to Ohio State, it lost by a combined total of 77 points. The sanctions had a huge impact on the scores of those games in 2013 and '15, but Penn State didn't fare all that much better in the final decade of Paterno's career, going 2- 5 in the Horseshoe from 2000 to 2011 and losing those five games by an aver- age margin of 23.8 points. For a long time, that's what normal looked like. What Franklin has done has been to rekindle memories of an earlier era, one in which the Lions were frequently in cham- pionship contention deep into the season. He and his staff have taken the trappings of greatness that the program has long possessed – the mammoth stadium, the rabid fan following, the championship pedigree, the NFL connections – and used them to build a modern program that can be nationally competitive against the better teams in the country. As disap- pointing as the losses to Ohio State and Michigan State may have been, Franklin's accomplishment should not be underes- timated. When you consider what he in- herited and compare it to what high- profile Big Ten counterparts Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh inherited at their schools, Penn State's transformation starts to look like one of the more impres- sive feats in recent college football history. The next step is to start beating elite opponents on the road, rather than just throwing a scare into them. That will re- quire Penn State to consistently recruit the kind of classes that it is poised to sign next month. Recruiting is the key to everything, as Ohio State showed in its victory over the Nittany Lions. The Buckeyes played a lousy game against Penn State. They committed 10 penal- ties, gave up two long kickoff returns and turned the ball over twice in their own territory. A lesser team would have lost handily. But Ohio State was able to We talk about every defense not having the key to stopping Saquon Barkley, a blueprint as it were. Did Ohio State do anything di%erent than Michigan did the week before? How important is it to $nd a solution to working all that out with him in the running game? I don't think I've necessarily commu- nicated it the way you just did, that every defense has the blueprint. I don't think I've communicated it that way. But, yeah, it's a challenge. I think one of the issues is that we've played some really good defensive foot- ball teams in terms of stopping the run. Northwestern is one of the best defenses in terms of stopping the run. Michigan is one of the best in the country at stop- ping the run. Ohio State is one of the best in the country at stopping the run. Michigan State is another one of those teams. I think that's a little bit about our league, as well. We've done a great job all year long getting Saquon the ball in di

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