A Stepping Stone For Penn State Football

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When the NCAA levied sanctions against the Penn State Nittany Lions football program in 2012, there wasn’t much joy in Happy Valley. Penn State had to pay $60 million in fines to the NCAA along with a reduction of football scholarships and a four-year bowl ban in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky Scandal. Penn State plays in the Big Ten Conference and the school and the conference both could not afford to have a marquee football program become irrelevant for that long. So last fall the NCAA announced that Penn State’s bowl ban would be immediately lifted which was a huge shot in the arm for the university and the Big Ten.

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James Franklin

Under first-year head coach James Franklin, Penn State finished this past college football season with a record of 7-6 which ended in a 31-30 victory last week over the Boston College Eagles in the Pinstripe Bowl and Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The game was the fifth edition of the Pinstripe Bowl and there was a record attendance for the game as 49,012 people traveled to the home of Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees to see this contest with the majority of the folks in attendance coming from Western Pennsylvania as they were chomping at the bit to see their beloved Nittany Lions play in a bowl game for the first time since 2011. Along the way Franklin took the time to acknowledge his senior class that stuck with the Penn State program in its darkest hour when it would have been so easy for them to jump ship. But those senior leaders provided leadership to the underclassmen while showing a mental toughness and resolve that some people that are twice their age don’t have. And now Franklin and the Nittany Lions have something to build off of going forward.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/e13b98f7f23b4dfb704c00be5079784776ff9e0b/c=164-0-2344-1635&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/AsburyPark/2014/12/27/B9315657385Z.1_20141227220245_000_G3H9H7287.2-0.jpgPenn State’s six losses this past season were all within the Big Ten with four of those defeats coming by a touchdown or less. The Nittany Lions began the season with a last second win over the Central Florida Knights and they finished it with an overtime win over BC. The reduction of scholarships will hurt Penn State in the short term, but Franklin does have a strong quarterback in sophomore Christian Hackenburg.

When Hackenburg was recruited to Penn State by former head football coach Bill O’Brien, he was one of the top prospects in the nation and he came to Happy Valley primarily because of O’Brien’s background of working with quarterbacks in the National Football League. With sanctions hanging over Penn State and the allure of becoming an NFL head coach, O’Brien left Happy Valley to become the head coach of the Houston Texans in the NFL which opened the door for Franklin to leave Vanderbilt University as their head football coach to join Penn State. But for Hackenburg he is looking to improve heading into his junior campaign. As a freshman, Hackenburg threw 20 touchdown passes to just 10 interceptions. Hackenburg wasn’t as efficient this past season as he was picked off 15 times while only throwing 12 touchdown passes primarily due to the fact that he was in a different offensive system this season under Franklin coming from O’Brien’s pro-style offense in 2013 while also not have a ton of talent around him offensively. In 2013, Hackenburg’s go-to-guy was wide receiver Allen Robinson who is now in the NFL with the Jacksonville Jaguars. But as the season progressed Hackenburg was able to developed some chemistry with freshman wide receiver DaeSean Hamilton who finished his first year at Penn State with 82 receptions for 899 receiving yards and a pair of touchdown grabs.

This past season Penn State had the second ranked defense in the nation and led by sophomore Nayeem Wartman, Franklin will look to keep that trend going in 2015 as for some time now Penn State has been known as “Linebacker U”.

For Penn State, Franklin is a tireless recruiter which was evident of the fact that he turned Vanderbilt into a winner while also sending talent to the National Football League during his tenure there which is unheard of. At Vandy, Franklin did the impossible as he took the program to three consecutive bowl game appearances for the first time in school history. Franklin is from Pennsylvania and Penn State has always had a stranglehold on the top high-school football talent coming out of Western Pennsylvania. And with NCAA sanctions being lifted, it means that the future is bright for them in the newly expanded Big Ten as another sleep giant in college football is waking up.

Sources: Sports-reference.com. Cfbstats.com

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By | 2015-01-04T14:48:45+00:00 January 4th, 2015|Categories: College Football|Tags: , , |0 Comments

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