That is what happens when programs let the tail start wagging the dog, it rarely turns out well. Paterno set this program back decades and the path to recovery is still blocked by his perceived image. Once that is gone PSU will be able to establish their identity. Just going to take more time and effort. He did a true disservice to the program and is now a severe liability.
Older alums and fans expect more of PSU
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I was referencing the Penn State Big 10 years - 1994 - 2011.
The biggest games some of those years would have been Pitt, WVU, Syracuse, Boston College. The 1968-71 teams only face ranked opponents in Bowl games. 2 losses in the 1966 season were to ranked UCLA and MSU.
My point is that the whole complexion of college FB in the earlier Paterno years was WAY different than it is now. There were NO scholarship limits. Paterno mostly recruited and got all the best PA talent. Playing in a conference and under today's football reality is way different than in the 1960s - 1980s.
NOT a Paterno hater. His real salary was over $1M but to be honest, taking the approach he did toward coaches salaries and facility upgrades really put a shocking disadvantage to the program when he left.
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What is an 'Elite' program and how many of them do you think there are. There are 3-4 who you can bet are in the conversation heading into each season- Alabama, OSU, Georgia, Clemson, currently Michigan. By my count, there have only been 12 total teams playing in the 4 team playoff over it's 8 years
I would say if you average 10 wins a year - you are in the top better than 10% of College FB and most likely Top 10 at the end of the season.
I like to be in Conference Championships / Play-off conversation (a little easier when it expands to 12 teams).
I would say if you average 10 wins a year - you are in the top better than 10% of College FB and most likely Top 10 at the end of the season.
I like to be in Conference Championships / Play-off conversation (a little easier when it expands to 12 teams).
First, why are so many people on here, like you, extremist babies? I didn't "hate" Paterno. Don't know if I've seen anyone on here who is a Paterno "hater." Being factual, and not buying into the messiah narrative isn't being a "hater" ... it's just being normal. He had an unbelievably awesome stretch. Brought PSU into football prominence. Then, it changed. The football world changed. His teams became far less dominant, save the occasional outlier season. Then he kept coaching into his 80s, which obviously shouldn't have happened.
You're just like marshall and others, who freak out whenever you criticize Franklin. I support Franklin as the coach ... but I'm still going to criticize him when there's a decision I don't agree with. And that's OK. I'm an alum. I'm a fan. I'm not a cheerleader. I'm not a worshipper.
Second, so if Franklin made $690K, or less (plus all the other side-stuff he was raking in), you wouldn't criticize him? You'd be a big supporter?
Perhaps before you ridicule Penn State's past football fortunes, you could get your facts correct.
1. Penn State began Big Ten play in 1993, not 1994.
2. There absolutely WERE scholarship limits for Penn State in Joe's early years: 25 to be exact. However, OTHER programs, such and in the Big 8, SWC and SEC, had no such limits. The SWC schools would give up to 50 scholarships a season, as listed in Dave Campbell's Texas Football magazine each summer. Hence, PSU faced a considerable disadvantage going against teams from those conferences. The 25 limit ended, I think, when Johnny Majors took over at Pitt and signed 90+ in 1973.
3. Your claim that Penn State "only face ranked opponents in Bowl games" from 1968-71 is also false. In 1969, both Kansas State and West Va were ranked, and WV entered the game with the #1 rushing offense in the nation, only to be shut out 20-0. Colorado is another opponent ranked in those years. Heck, in Joe's first season, he faced #1 Michigan State, #3 UCLA, and $5 Ga Tech.
4. The claim that Joe "recruited and got all the best PA talent" is a bit of an exaggeration. He lost numerous high-profile PA players, especially QBs, but he also recruited talent from outside PA to replace them. He practically owned NJ, and still signed top talent from NY and MD.
I don't quite understand the need for so many current fans to denigrate Penn State's past success under Joe as merely the result of "playing Temple and Rutgers every year." Or the constant harping on his lack of championships in his later years.
What these naysayers should recall is that the 2 Darlings of the Big Ten were basically imposters nationally all the way to the mid-90s. Research the Bowl records of Michigan and Ohio State prior to Penn State's joining the corrupt conference. Once they left the friendly confines of Parry and Honig and Associates, they struggled (and Michigan still struggles) to whip non-league Big Boys. Penn State under Joe had fewer problems beating champs from the Big 8, SWC or SEC (except for Bryant) despite the huge disparity in scholarships.
When Penn State joined the league, the Big Ten hadn't had an unbeaten team since 1968. It wouldn't get another national title until the split one in 1997. I'd rate Penn State's schedules from 1966-1992 as much tougher than those of either Darling.
Yet, sadly, the 2, especially Ohio State, have gotten much much better since 1993 while Penn State has been more pedestrian. But to claim that PSU was "never elite" is ridiculous.
However, I do agree with you that the landscape today is different. And it doesn't seem as if James Franklin is able to cultivate it.
Option, I was about to call him out also, particularly with respect to scholarship limits. Back in those days, I think Pitt, PSU, West Virginia and maybe Syracuse had a gentlemen's agreement on the 25 scholarship limit. Given that, what Joe did with the Penn State program under those restrictions was nothing short of remarkable. Also, he should be made aware that Penn State's record vs Ohio State prior to us joining the Big Ten was 4-0, which by the way includes the Rip Engle coached (Joe had a key input in the game plan) 1964 27-0 shutout of then #2 Ohio State. Going into that game, we had a losing record. All of those four wins were, I believe, in Columbus. Great post. Can always count on you to remember those days with clarity.
P.S. And I'll never forget Dan Devine's comment after the 1970 Orange Bowl vs. Missouri. "They were a thousand miles ahead of anybody we played. It's to our credit that the score wasn't 40-3." That Big Eight champion Missouri team, by the way, beat Michigan that season by around 30 points.
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"Facility upgrades?" The Lasch Building was all of 12 years old when Paterno left the program.
As for assistants' salaries, never heard O"Brien complain that it posed an impediment. By the time Franklin took over, Joe was two years gone and had no influence on the program.
Always easier to blame the dead guy for the shortcomings of others.
This isn't the whole picture, in 1973 is when the NCAA imposed the first scholarship limit of 105 because of Title IX, and that limit was reduced to 95 in 1978 and then to 85 in 1992. Paterno had the benefit of more scholarships for 26 of his 45 years compared to today's coaches. What Paterno/PSU did pre-1973 isn't really relevant to compare results then to results post-1992.
How could Majors sign 90+ in 1973?
I actually stayed successful. Won’t get into an unprovable and undefined “better” debate.
PSU played only one team in ‘19? tOSU in ‘19 was just as good as USC in ‘08, and it was a true road game. As a comparison, they both played an FCS equivalent team, ignoring that:
‘08 Opponents: 79-71 0.527 with 4 top 20 teams (3, 9, 18, 20)
‘19 Opponents: 95-60 0.613 with 5 top 20 teams (3, 10, 15, 17, 18)
‘19 played 3 of those top 20 teams on the road, whereas ‘08 played 2 top 20 teams on the road.
Provide one bit of evidence that supports your view about ‘08.
They were ranked 6th in the human polls and 8th in the BCS. That isn’t too 4.
Show one statement of mine that does not give appropriate credit to PSU’s past.
I’m not going to overinflate anything like you are with ‘08.
Yeah, Joe was really pushing to be on the leading edge of college football his last decade.
We beat osu and Michigan in 08. Osu at the shoe back to back games.
Wow that was easy.
When have we done that in past 9 years?
Majors basically signed his whole PITT 1976 National Championship team in that 1973 group. Coming from the South - he was able to get a lot of Southern kids. Most never finished school
Fine, so we can then continue to blame every deficiency of PSU's football program on him forever.
It's not about "marginalizing our past" ... it's about putting it into proper perspective, in light of criticisms of the present.
You are romanticizing the JoePa era. And being unduly harsh on the present.
In the last 25 years of JoePa's tenure (1987-2011), 12 of those were 4-loss or worse seasons. 18 of them were 3-loss or worse seasons. Only 2 of them were 0 or 1 loss. So when we see the threads about Franklin having a ceiling of a 2-loss team ... Dude, in JoePa's last 25 years, only 2 of those 25 teams were better than that (a 2-loss team).
So, just imagine Franklin is here for 23 years, and he posts the following: 1 9-loss year, 2 7-loss years, 3 6-loss years, 1 5-loss year, 5 4-loss years, 6 3-loss years, and 5 2-loss years ...
How would you characterize his tenure?
Is that "elite," and you worship him, and wish our next coach could get back to that?
Because that's what JoePa did in 23 of his last 25 years. Adding in his amazing 1994 undefeated team (17 years before he finally left), and the 1-loss year ... that suddenly turns that 23 years of performance into 25 years of being "elite"?
Take that 2008 team ... great season. Fun. But if it happened now ... you and other Franklin critics would be pointing out that we were lucky to face a 3-9 Michigan team, and that we had a bye week before Iowa (a team that would have been 7-5 in the regular season had we beaten them), and still couldn't pull off the win ... because of bad coaching decisions, no doubt ... and when we finally went up against a top team in the bowl, we saw that we were inevitably not up to their level. Sadly, that would be the narrative pushed by those who constantly look for the negative in Franklin-coached squads (of which there are many on this board).
You don't really seem to have a pulse as to what's going on here. It's not about heaping blame on JoePa for the current state of things ... it's about putting the over-the-top criticism of the current staff into proper perspective, given that a lot of the criticism is based off some pie-in-the-sky imagined xanadu that past PSU football performance has been placed in, in order to justify current expectations.
I’m not a Franklin critic. Franklin needs to find his way to get psu back on top that is the expectation of Penn state. I hope he does it and adapts and changes his style and what he needs to do as time goes on. Joe did that for 5 decades and adapted sometimes later than sooner but he adapted. His last year he was 8-1 in his 6th decade before he left.
I’m not going to let anyone tear down what Joe did for this program and this university. I grew up in town and knew him and his family etc. so to hear anyone talk about what Joe did except for making this university great then I will respond.
Joe won the championship in 1982 and what did he say. Let’s use this championship to make Penn state as a whole Great. That is all you need to know.
oh by the way. Most wins by any coach ever.. 409!!! Marginalize that!!
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At least you acknowledge that you won’t be objective and/or reasonable. You’re a cheerleader when it comes to this topic. I’m presenting facts.
And they lost to Iowa in ’08, unlike ’19. That Iowa loss kept them out of the MNC game just as much as a loss in either of the other two games would have. Btw, tOSU, Michigan, and Iowa were all top 20 opponents in ’19. They weren’t all ranked in ’08. As a matter of fact, Michigan was 3-9 in ’08. They haven’t been that bad for a lot longer than 9 years. You do make things easy.
I’m still waiting for whatever backup you can provide about your theoretical ’08 CFP claim. Want to use the beating a 3-9 team and barely losing to Iowa only in the last second as your support?
There is a job or HC around that would survive 2 losing seasons in a row anymore. Never mind 4 in 5 years, that leash no longer exists in college football at blue blood p5 schools. There is way too much money involved for that to even be discussed.
There were a lot of folks who were hoping he'd move on well before then. The period after the 1986 team was pretty bleak, compared to past "eliteness." (little did we know what we were in for down the road) There was a TON of talk about how the game had passed him by, and how it'd be great if he stepped aside and let some new blood come in, rather than hang on and potentially smear his own legacy with mediocre to bad teams. Then the 1994 season happened and won him more time. After that, everyone just gave up and decided that JoePa would control his own destiny, no matter how bad or mediocre the results, so when the dark years rolled around, everyone just hoped he'd care enough about the university, and the program, to step aside. He didn't.
Coaches aren't even making it through the season anymore. Some of those teams just flounder for years going from HC to HC looking for the right one.
College football anymore is so much about the money. Not that it hadn't been in the past but now it is the life blood of not only athletic departments but the school's image.
Franklin in 2020,2021. We kept him in hopes that he would get this program to another level which we all hope he does
So you focus on a what if I presented in 08. A team that went 11-1 in regular season which no team under franklin has done band yet you marginalize that team and it’s players to fulfill your narrative.
again 2005 would have made a cfp playoff and yet crickets from you.
Good offense and great defense.
1994 greatest offense in history and you marginalize it as a fluke.
over and over you want to put down paterno. Yes 2003 and 2004 sucked. He said to trust him and he went out and captured the number 1 player in the class of 2005 etc and said Robinson was great and everyone laughed. Well 2005 was awesome and paterno did it again in his 5th decade.
We wish he did retire after 2009. Went out on top before people like you say this and say that about him. 2011 he was 8-1.
the guy is a legend. Period. You can’t put it down because his great record over a career stands on its own. Bowden stayed too long so did the bear etc. it happens.
Bama still talks about the bear in awe. Why can’t we do the same about paterno.
I think because they are young and do not know the history. You just laid it all out, with facts.
My initial response was to a poster that laid the blame (for facilities issues and ac salaries) squarely in Joe's lap. I made no criticism of the current staff.
Who says you can't ? Joe was a legend , not even in question, and contrary to what Jay has stated several times , he is not reviled , the only ones that revile him are ND and Pitt fans .
JVP is a legend because of the life he led and how he made a difference. 409 football wins come in second to his life.
I've always had the greatest respect for Joe- but Bear won 6 Nattys and 13 conference championships, and beat Joe head to head every time they played. You picked the wrong guy to compare.
He's not my hero and my feelings aren't hurt, so why don't you put up or shut up?
I'll give you a hint because I typically don't help the lazy. It's somewhere in this thread and none of it is a secret.
The points are there and I posted them, you're just too lazy to click on the number 3 and scroll for a minute to find them. You asked to see them, they are there.
You made 3 separate claims about it before I joined the thread. An honest poster would have provided the supporting evidence I requested, or maybe even retracted a claim. What would be the appropriate description of a poster who tries to accuse an inquiring mind of being focused on it?
A season includes the results of a bowl game. How is presenting factual evidence that shows a different season in a better limelight in any way marginalizing the '08 team?
I never questioned 2005 and in post #105 of this thread I described the season as really fun.
You are an outright liar as I never mentioned 1994, and in fact, in the same post #105 of this thread, I specifically started discussing post-'96 seasons.
The rest of your rant displays your inability to have a polite conversation. If you continue to make false claims about what I have written, I will enjoy going through your posts and pointing out the continued factual errors and poorly thought-out claims.
Not really. Notre Dame has enjoyed recent success in at least playing for a title. Not a good comparison.
PSU is a program that is still hampered by the Paterno curse, where fans like to live in a past alternative universe.
So bear is to Bama as Joe is to psu. What part don’t you get about that. Joe had more undefeated seasons and won 100 more games than the bear. So it is a wash in greatness and both are top 5 all time.
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