TicketCity Bowl: Penn State Football’s Black Cloud Will Stick Around for Awhile

DALLAS — Houston? They too shall pass.

But the black cloud over Penn State football? It looks like that won’t pass for quite awhile.

Houston quarterback Case Keenum made quick work of the Nittany Lions in the TicketCity Bowl on Monday, setting an all-time bowl record for passing yards in a quarter.

That’s all-time, in all bowls. Ever.

That black cloud included a fog over the Penn State secondary, which played like it was only half there — much like the crowd of 46,817 in the 92,118-seat Cotton Bowl.

By the time the first quarter was over, Keenum had thrown for 227 yards and two touchdowns on 21-for-29 passing. That’s a record in the history of all postseason bowl games, surpassing the 223 yards by Louisville’s Browning Nagle against Alabama in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl.

By the time the first half was over, Houston led 24-7. And its touchdowns came bang (112-second drive), bang (69 seconds) and bang (24 seconds). In Big D, only Dirk and the Mavs get to the baseline faster.

Three TD passes, three drives lasting 205 seconds. Total.

What else do you expect from a team that scored 86 touchdowns overall and averaged 50.8 points per game in 2011?

And by halftime, Keenum’s numbers read like they were straight from EA’s NCAA Football 12.

In the first 30 minutes, Keenum threw for 380 yards and three touchdowns on 30-for-46 passing. The passes and completions are 2011 season-highs against Penn State’s defense. Houston’s Patrick Edwards was the happy recipient of many of those throws, grabbing seven receptions for 200 yards and a touchdown.

Keenum finished with 532 yards and three TDs, on 45-for-69 passing.

Houston won the game, 30-14, for a 13-1 record, while Penn State — which lost three of its final four games — finished 9-4.

PENN STATE’S SEASON LONG GONE

Actually, Penn State was finished a long time ago.

Against Houston, the Nittany Lions did manage a six-yard scoring run by Stephfon Green and a 69-yard scoring toss from Rob Bolden to Justin Brown. But Bolden completed just 7-of-26 passes for 136 yards, with that TD and three interceptions. Thank goodness he had all those extra reps in the weeks leading up to the bowl game.

It wasn’t just Bolden; the Nittany Lions were pretty much a lifeless group. That was to be expected.

The Nittany Lions actually voted not to go to the bowl game in a players-only meeting the Sunday night invitations were extended, feeling disrespected after waiting longer than expected to get an invite.

They received a scolding from acting athletic director Dave Joyner at another meeting the next day, receiving Christmas Day at home as a concession for making the trip. By accounts, that meeting was a mess.

Compounding the squad’s problems was the lame duck status of most, if not all of the coaching staff. Joe Paterno was fired in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal on Nov. 9, and Tom Bradley assumed the interim head coach mantle.

Bradley did all he could to hold the team, and the staff, together with bailing wire, a relentlessly upbeat attitude and pure Scrap. It was, as he put it the day before the bowl game, “the most unusual coaching situation in the history of college football.”

That’s putting it mildly.

Once Joyner and his six-person search committee were formed on Nov. 28, it was an all-out race to the search committee’s interview room. Quarterbacks coach Jay Paterno went first, followed by defensive line coach Larry Johnson Sr. and then Bradley. Linebackers coach Ron Vanderlinden got into the fray late but had his cents worth.

Even ex-Nittany Lion coach Brian Norwood, now an associate head coach with Baylor, was an entry.

All the while Joyner kept on giving interviews and appearing in videos and issuing statements, all with the same standard message — we are being deliberate, we know what we are doing, this is a unique circumstance. Meanwhile, 24 other coaching vacancies in college football were filled.

Then there was a fight between quarterback Matt McGloin and receiver Curtis Drake that drew the EMTs, the police and a horde of media types, and the Nittany Lions were more dysfunctional than the Addams Family. That Drake didn’t make the bowl trip and McGloin was still unable to play due to a fight-induced concussion were just the icing on the cake.

So, the Penn State coaches entered the bowl game while looking for jobs. The players were looking to end the season. Twenty-three seniors were looking to get out of dodge – Derek Moye and Devon Still are not returning to campus, heading instead to Florida to prep for the NFL Draft – and many people in the program are looking over their shoulders, waiting for Louis Freeh or the HR pink slip people to stop by.

THE LONG WAIT HOME

And we all wait for a new head coach.

We all wait, too, for the results of about 106 different investigations into Penn State, including one by the NCAA.

It’s possible, either through sanctions or a poor season(s) on the field, the TicketCity Bowl is the last postseason game Penn State plays in for awhile. Continued inconsistent play at quarterback and an incoming recruiting class that is sure to diminish in the coming days will only exacerbate the problem. Make that problems. Plural.

Attendance at Beaver Stadium had already dipped by a few thousand per game in 2011, mainly due to an aging and increasingly-invisible Joe Paterno, close games against less-than-stellar opposition and a quarterback derby that just jockeyed and jerked around everyone — the QBs, their teammates and fans alike.

If Joyner and his committee — which is mostly comprised of Joyner and Penn State trustee Ira Lubert — end up hiring anyone from the firm of O’Brien, Roman and Clements, increased coaching staff salaries and continued decreased attendance could cost Penn State athletics upwards to $10 million a year.

That’s the real ballgame these days.

Against Houston, the 30-14 final score was not as bad as it looked.

The state of the Penn State football program? It’s worse than it looks.

Related Content:

StateCollege.com’s Penn State football page