The Right Words

It’s tough after a last minute field goal loss to Notre Dame in the playoff semifinal to find the right words. I usually go to the postgame conference to see what answers Coach Franklin has and honestly, you should go watch it too. He found a way to acknowledge the game’s shortcomings and still point to the positives better and more passionately than I’m going to here.

 

But, many of you probably don’t want to hear that. Because you’re furious with Franklin for once again failing to win the “big game.” Maybe you don’t care what he says; what you care about his abysmal stats against top 5 teams. Maybe you want him punished for failing to win the National Championship once again because you’ve been waiting his entire ten years at Penn State for that. And, maybe you’re angry at Drew Allar because he played a bad game on his biggest stage yet; he should have executed better. Period. Maybe you’re all over Facebook and sports blogs identifying what is wrong with this team and who exactly is to blame for these failed expectations.

 

The frustration is justified. We have so much baggage and a narrative we can’t seem to let go of that it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

We thought this team was special. We let ourselves believe that we had a shot at the National Championship. I know I could already see us beating Ohio State for the title; I wondered aloud if it was our destiny. 

 

So, it’s okay to be hurt and disappointed. We should be hurting after that loss; we all feel it. This team WAS special and they didn’t go as far as we wanted them to and our hearts are broken.

 

And, we’re just the fans! We didn’t put in even one drop of blood, sweat, or tears to play sixteen games and win thirteen of them. Imagine how much greater the heartbreak is for each college kid who worked his butt off to get to that game, who showed up with the best he had that day, and found it wasn’t enough to win. On top of the loss, they’re getting slammed by people who claim to be Penn Staters, even while the act of trashing our team brings us all shame.

 

It’s not okay to take to the internet or text or wherever and degrade our players and our coach. It’s mean and it’s unjustified. We are all human. We are all trying our best with what we have within us today. Penn State’s best this season was very, very good. Let’s stop acting like it wasn’t.

 

When asked how he thought Allar would handle this loss, Franklin said that Drew is a passionate guy who invests so much into his own development, into his teammates, and into Penn State, and that he is a committed guy who is going to do it right. “It may not feel like it right now, but he'll learn from this and he'll be better for it, and so will we.” 

 

And so will we. We can choose to do it right, too. We can just as easily take to the internet and our personal conversations with a positive lens. We can choose to acknowledge our feelings of frustration and heartbreak and also make supportive comments about our players and coaches; we can be frustrated with them rather than at them. We can be the louder voices of pride and encouragement. We are the ones who can change the narrative. There is so much to be proud of and we can choose to see it. We can find the right words to voice it.

 

We say We Are Penn State. Now, we have a chance to remember what that means. It’s always been about more than wins and losses.

 

“It's about the guys in the locker room, and it's about their development. I take so much pride in how our guys go about their business, how they grow, how they develop, academically at a time in college football where that's being challenged,” Franklin said. “I take a lot of pride in how our guys conduct themselves, how they carry themselves, the degrees they get, the type of men that they're going to be, the type of leaders, fathers…I want them to get drafted as high as possible. I understand the transfer portal is a part of college football now and NIL is a part of college football and we'll embrace those things, too, but I want this experience to be so much more than a transactional experience. I want it to be transformational.”

 

Let’s put this game in its proper place: as part of an amazing season that ended in ways that upset us, in a game that didn’t turn out how we wanted it to but that was hard fought and close until the very end.

 

I look forward to seeing you all next season, which will be here sooner than ever, with a fresh outlook and ready to truly support our Penn State team! We Are!