Click here to subscribe today or Login.
WILKES-BARRE — As a lifelong fan of Notre Dame football — until recent years of ineptness — I can also say that I am damn proud to be a fan of the Penn State Nittany Lions.
Especially after this year, when Coach James Franklin took a team that almost nobody expected to be much above .500 to the Big Ten championship and a trip to the Rose Bowl.
Penn State finished its season at 11 wins and 3 losses. It could be argued that they deserved a spot in the final four playoffs — that they won their conference title and they defeated Ohio State, who did get a spot in the playoffs, only to be routed by Clemson.
When the season began and Penn State appeared to be struggling at 2-2, you could hear the rumblings about how Coach Franklin might not return for another season, how the team just isn’t a high-caliber program and how a return to glory might never happen.
And then this team and this coach and these faithful fans embarked on a magical tour that I would venture to say nobody saw coming. Win after win, second-half comebacks almost weekly, that blocked kick and a win over the Buckeyes and suddenly, Penn State was in the mix for a Big Ten title and maybe even a shot at a national championship.
You could see it all unfolding right before your eyes — confidence was evident everywhere, from the quarterback to the coaching staff to the packed Beaver Stadium “white outs.”
This 2016 season will be the benchmark when Penn State football, with those plain uniforms and helmets and black cleated shoes, came back — back from the dark days of a scandal brought upon it by a nasty old man and a scandal that had absolutely nothing to do with any Penn State football player.
No Penn State player — not one — had anything to do with any of the disgusting actions that happened on that campus in Happy Valley, yet the players were the ones who unjustifiably paid a severe price. And through the years of suspensions, lost scholarships, million dollar fines and penalties, and public embarrassment, the players stayed true to their school, their team and their fans.
Penn State paid a high price for the way it mishandled the Sandusky sex abuse case. But the NCAA was grossly unfair in its sanctions that it meted out to the university and its football program. Yes, Penn State terribly mishandled the Sandusky situation and by so doing, it failed its students, its supporters and most importantly, it failed the victims of Sandusky, a pedophile who will spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.
But those NCAA penalties harmed innocent people — students — both academically and athletically. I will never understand why the almighty NCAA punished so many Penn State football players, coaches and fans — none of which were participants in the cover-up.
I’ve said this before, you don’t improve a university by hurting its students and athletes. At a time when a sensitive situation called for a sensitive, thorough, fair evaluation, the NCAA failed.
And now, Penn State has weathered this storm. It has returned to glory. Listen to what Coach Franklin had to say at statecollege.com just after losing a heartbreaking game to USC in the Rose Bowl.
“We won the Big Ten Championship this year. That’s the first time that’s happened in I think over 20 years. We’ve got a lot of work to do. There are programs that have been playing like this at this level for a number of years, and we’ve got a lot of work to do to catch up. It’s going to be a long, steady, difficult climb. As difficult as this year was to have, we’re going to have to fight even more to be able to sustain it. And there’s a lot of things that are going to go into that.
“But with the young men that we’ve got in this locker room and the staff that I’ve been fortunate enough to surround myself with, the support that we’ve gotten from President (Eric J.) Barron and Sandy Barbour, our athletic director, if we just realize we’ve got a great opportunity right now and capitalize on it, keep working, you know, I think we can continue to build this thing and continue to do special things.”
The Nittany Lions performance this year and throughout the post-Sandusky scandal, has made all Pennsylvanians proud.
We are Pennsylvania proud.
We are Penn State.
We (really) are.
