Folks, we have made it. Football season is just around the corner as Penn State starts its fall camp today.
There’s so much different with this Penn State football program from the last time we saw them. Stalwarts of the program like Drew Allar, Nick Singleton, Kaytron Allen, and Dani Dennis-Sutton are gone. The iconic “swoosh” is gone with Nike no longer making the uniforms. Oh, and James Franklin isn’t the head coach for the first time since the 2013 season. The last time Penn State entered the season without James Franklin, the following was happening:
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Barack Obama had just started his second term.
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LeBron James (who now plays for the Sixers) and the Miami Heat had just won their second title.
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I was heading into my sophomore year in college. I turn 33 in December.
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Gas prices were around $3.60 per gallon in PA.
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Eric Barron was still at Florida State and hadn’t started his tenure at Penn State yet.
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Sandy Barbour was still at Cal.
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I think Jared and Cari were the only bloggers writing for BSD back then that are still here.
So yeah, it’s been a while. Now, we have a new leader in Matt Campbell as he brings a contingent of Iowa State players with him. The aforementioned Rocco Becht. Caleb Bacon. Kooper Ebel. Marcus Neal. Carson Hanse. They’ll be rocking Adidas gear as we officially go into the three stripes life.
Things are different. Really different. You look at the sport as a whole and change can be seen everywhere. Players now have 5 years to play 5 years. Redshirts are now extinct. The lines are blurred between “professional” and “student-athlete” in a way they never have before, with a group of 2022 players having spent mini camps with NFL teams now permitted back into the game — maybe. Washington DC has its teeth sunken into the sport to fix it — which not to get political — will *certainly* work out. Yup, absolutely. They’ll totally have this thing fixed.
The sport, and this program, are in bizarre places. I don’t know what the future holds for either, to be quite candid. For the sport as a whole, it feels like “college football” makes too much money to ever collapse. But will the new version this year, next year, and the years that follow resemble anything we know and love about it? And for Penn State, for so long we basically knew what we were getting from James Franklin — good, maybe even great, but never enough as it turns out. Will Matt Campbell be the one who fixes it?
Despite the unknown, I’m excited to get this thing started. I’m excited to put CFP expansion, conference TV rights, NIL offers, athlete eligibility, and Congressional acts on the back burner. I’m excited to stop re-litigating the James Franklin era over and over and over. Simply put, I’m ready to spot the damn ball.
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While we won’t *officially” spot the ball for a few more weeks, the start of a fall camp is a nice reminder it’s coming. College football will be here. Penn State football will be here. Two things that signal one of the best times of the year has officially arrived, even amidst the extra quirkiness both have brought us this offseason.
