A Reflection on the State of Penn State Football

Writing during (and after) the Penn State - Indiana game, here are some quick thoughts about the Penn State football program and why we can't get back to a National Championship (and won't for years to come).

Poor Quarterback Play

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I now believe that Anthony Morelli was a better PSU quarterback than Daryll Clark (or was at least comparable). What evidence do I have? Take a look.

Bowl records
Anthony Morelli: Victories in Outback ('06-'07 season, 20-10 over Tennessee) and Alamo ('07-'08 season, 24-17 over Texas A&M)
Daryll Clark: Loss in Rose ('08-'09 season, 38-24 to USC)

Career record as starter
Anthony Morelli: 18-8 (9-7)
Daryll Clark: 19-3 (11-3)

Other big games
Anthony Morelli:
- Wins over: Notre Dame ('07), Iowa ('07), Wisconsin ('07), Michigan State ('06)
- Losses to: Notre Dame ('06), Ohio State ('06, '07), Michigan ('06, '07), Wisconsin ('06), Illinois ('07), Michigan State ('07)
Daryll Clark:
- Wins over: Oregon State ('08), Illinois ('08, '09), Ohio State ('08), Michigan ('08, '09), Michigan State ('08), Wisconsin ('08)
- Losses to: Iowa ('08, '09), Ohio State ('09)

Total offense (as of 11/13/09, with 2 regular season games left in Clark's career)
Anthony Morelli: 5275 passing yards, 31TD, 19INT
Daryll Clark: 5022 passing yards, 37TD, 14INT

While Clark's numbers are slightly better than Morelli's, they're not that much better. Morelli also brought home two bowl victories, while Clark has managed to lose every major game that he's played in. Maybe that's the difference here; nobody expected anything from Morelli, and he fulfilled (and probably surpassed) that expectation. People expected great things from Clark and he has been anti-clutch.

A final interesting point: Morelli was a five star recruit coming to PSU. Clark was a three star recruit. What this means, I don't know, other than the "experts" are apparently morons.

All that being said, both pale in comparison to the one, the only, Michael Robinson. But even MRob wasn't a great QB... he wasn't even a full-time starter at that position until his senior year, and it could be argued he was just an outstanding athlete that was stuck at QB. Before him, there was Zach Mills. The QB's of the last decade have not been quality.

The bottom line: PSU hasn't had a real quarterback since Kerry Collins (who graduated in '95), which was also the last time PSU was included in the National Championship discussion (well, in '94, but that's besides the point). Coincidence?

Under-utilization of Athletes / Poor Offensive Playcalling

This one is squarely on the shoulders of Galen Hall, the champion of the "three yards and a cloud of dust" mentality. A typical PSU drive looks like this:
First Down: HB Draw
Second Down: HB Draw (maybe a FB Dive if Hall is feeling frisky)
Third Down: WR Screen
Fourth Down: Punt

The most annoying thing to me is the general unwillingness of the PSU offense to run the option. This is something I've been harping on for years now. A good read option can freeze a defense in its tracks and really open up the play action pass. You can't tell me that a three-man backfield (in the 2008-2009 roster) with Clark, DWill, and Butler running the read option wouldn't make a defense think twice about doing anything? Even a triple option now and then would be refreshing. Anything that involves two men running in the same direction with the ball carrier having the ability to pitch to the other player is fine with me. Instead we get the "Spread HD", which is actually just the spread, but with a lot more HB Dives and less excitement.

To name a few of the players from the past five years that have not been allowed to reach their athletic potential:
1. Mike Robinson (he can do this)
- PSU took one of the greatest athletes ever to come through the school and stuck him in the backfield and told him not to move unless he had to. Come on. This man ended a Minnesota safety's football career. He could've been a RB, FB, QB, TE, WR, DE, LB, or FS (in my opinion, the position he was best suited for), but they made him a pocket passer. Talk about a total waste of talent. The fact that they treated him as a journeyman for the first three years of his collegiate career doesn't help.
2. Daryll Clark (he can do this)
- Again, the whole "Stay where you are until you're about to be annihilated. Then feel free to move."
3. Derrick Williams (he can do this)
- Whether his athletic talents were under-utilized is debatable, as he was sometimes lined up as an RB, sometimes as a WR, and sometimes as a QB (basically the Wildcat before it was called that). However, running the option would've really allowed him to blow some defenses apart. After a while, defenses get that any weird formation equals a DWill run.

I'm sure there are others, but I just don't care to expand on this topic. It'll just make me angry at Galen Hall. Moving on.

Note: The two clips worth viewing are from the 2005 season. Just saying.

Note 2: About the Wildcat. I was running this offense in NCAA 2004 for XBox years before it blazed onto the college and pro football scenes, and in Madden for years before that. This offense is nothing special. A pasty, white teenager from the suburbs of Hartford that has never played a down of organized football in his life stumbled upon it on his own. Can't be that great. Or maybe I am that great. You decide.

The bottom line: Why bother bringing in fast, elusive players if you're not going to use them (or are just going to hit them on a slant occasionally)? Although to be fair, the lack of a real home run threat can be limiting at times.

Poor Fan Support

Ever since the 2005 OSU-PSU game when Kirk Herbstreit called the PSU student section the "Best Student Section In The Country", it has been anything but. There have been maybe three games since then that the student section was full both before the end of the first quarter and after the start of the fourth quarter.

Am I in favor of reducing the size of the student section (something that has been proposed over and over)? Since I am now an alumni, it is undoubtedly my obligation to say yes. If they're not going to show, I'm sure there are alumni that will be glad to take those seats.

The Athletic Department is no doubt partly responsible for the poor turnout. Two things have gone a long way toward ensuring at least some empty seats at every game:
1. Ticketing process
- Making it virtually impossible to buy/sell student tickets, many simply go unused.
2. Cost
- Not only is the current cost an issue, but the prices for tickets will actually be increasing next year. No better way to alienate your fan base than jacking prices to watch your home team play a completely overmatched opponent!

The bottom line: It's very simple. Come early, be loud, stay late. If you can't manage that, you have some much larger issues to work on. And the student section should probably be shrunk until the students prove that there are enough of them to warrant that many seats.

Poor Scheduling

Recruits (and BCS voters, and alumni) don't want to see the team beating up on Coastal Carolina and Eastern Illinois. The strength of schedule has been a running joke for a while now, and if we ever did run the table, it could be a serious problem. Not only that, the lack of quality teams each year really makes it difficult for PSU fans to gauge how good the team is (for example, the '09-'10 Nittany Lions, who have lost to the only two quality teams on their schedule).

The bottom line: Unfortunately, this won't change. It's all about economics, and PSU "needs" to pack Beaver Stadium at least 7 times a season. It's the reason we don't play Pittsburgh anymore (PSU wouldn't spring for a home-and-home series for any extended period). Tim Curley and his cronies in the Athletic Department continue to disappoint (see: "Poor Fan Support" discussion above for reinforcement).

Geography

This one usually gets overlooked. Coincidentally, it's the same reason our hottest cheerleader bears a striking resemblance to Bruce Vilanch. Where is football a way of life? PLACES WITH WARM CLIMATES. Places like Texas, Florida, California, and the Midwest.

As a result, 8 of the last 25 AP national champions were from the Midwest (actually, only 6... I cheated and included Ohio State and Notre Dame here), 12 were from the Southeast, and 4 were from the West. By comparison, only 1 ('86 Penn State) was from the Mid-Atlantic or New England.

The bottom line: We can't control this, just have to deal with it. Unless China has some wacky ideas for us. I hear they're into controlling the weather (link: AFP: Playing with weather stirs debate in China).

Summary

We play in a place that nobody wants to live, don't show up for our team, have poor offensive team leaders (both under center and in the press box), don't use the athletes we do have, and win only because we play crappy teams. Yep, sounds about right. Until a few of these things change, PSU will not be competing for a National Championship. It's sad to say, but it's true.