James Franklin: Expect Penn State’s Blue-White Scrimmage to Be a Real Football Game

Expect a reasonable facsimile of a real football game when Penn State takes the field — and both sidelines — for the annual Blue-White Game in Beaver Stadium on Saturday.

The scrimmage is the 15th and final official practice of the spring — as permitted by the NCAA — and though termed a practice, Penn State head coach James Franklin thinks it may closely resemble an actual game.

Which Franklin tentatively promised as such at the start of spring drills, back in early March.

A traditional spring game, Franklin said then, “has become more and more challenging the last couple of years. I think being able to go out there and compete in a spring game-type setting will be important for our team.”

Tuesday night, after the Nittany Lions concluded their 12th practice of the spring, Franklin was still hopeful that that fans who make the trip to Happy Valley for the game — scheduled to kick off at 2 p.m., with free admission, in addition to being televised live by the Big Ten Network — will actually see exactly that: A game.

“We got some bumps and bruises,” acknowledged Franklin, among them a “significant” injury to No. 3 quarterback Jaxon Smolik, who will be out for an indefinite period of time. “We have had a very physical spring ball. But we expect a more traditional game.”

I asked Franklin to explain the game’s format. Rather than a straight draft of players or pitting the No. 1 offense vs. the No. 1 (or 2) defense, Franklin will be strategic when setting his Blue and White rosters for the scrimmage.

Most heartening for fans: He’ll be trying for a balanced ballgame, with top players on both sides of the ball and on both rosters.

“I’m just kind of breaking it up and trying to make it as competitive as possible,” said Franklin, who is wrapping up his 11th set of spring practices as head coach at Penn State. “So strategically, [by] putting [starting] guys on both teams, I think the game has a chance to be competitive — guys that we would probably consider starters.

For example, he said: “You know, say like the way we rotate D tackles, right, usually, at least four D tackles are, in our mind, starters. Those guys are broken up, if that makes sense. Same thing with the corners and so on and so forth. So trying to kind of divvy it up so that you got guys that you feel like you can play in Big Ten games are on either side of the ball and on either sideline.”

Franklin will have his team do a lot of basic prep for the scrimmage during practices No. 13 (Thursday) and No. 14 (Friday, without pads). They’ll do walkthroughs of offensive plays and defensive sets; practice running on and off the field for a change of downs or for special teams; and will even review the rudimentary but key aspects of game day activities — taking the team bus, setting up in the locker room, entering the field en masse via the south end zone tunnel and going through the basics of the pre-game timetable, from warm-ups by specialists and then position groups and units.

NEW FACES AND SECONDARY THOUGHTS

All of that is key, as the Nittany Lions have 25 players on their roster now that they didn’t last fall. That includes portal acquisitions and former PA high school five-stars WR Julian Fleming (Ohio State) and Nolan Rucci (Wisconsin), and former SEC cornerbacks Jalen Kimber and A.J. Harris. Kimber is a fifth-year senior who started 11 games at Florida in 2023 and also spent two years at Georgia. Harris is a sophomore who played in seven games as a freshman for Georgia.

On Tuesday, Harris said he is looking forward to playing in front of fans in Beaver Stadium. “I just want to come out and try my hardest,” Harris said. “And you know, show my teammates I’m here to play hard every Saturday and every time I step on that Beaver Stadium.”

And what, I asked Harris, would success look like on Saturday? He answered in a split second.

“Success?” Harris replied. “Success looks like my team winning.”

Harris’ position coach, the venerable Terry Smith — a former Penn State co-captain — has been part of at least 15 Blue-White Games as a player and coach. Smith knows what the scrimmage is all about, and what he is looking for. His vision of success is a bit different than that of Harris.

“Saturday is about just coming out and playing hard, giving great effort, no mental missed assignments, just executing the game plan,” Smith said. “No missed tackles. Keep the ball inside of you. And just play hard, hustle, run to the football. Just the core basics of football. If we can do that, it’ll be a successful day.”

Though Franklin’s squad — perhaps his deepest ever, he shared this spring — has practiced and scrimmaged in Beaver Stadium this spring (sans fans), Saturday will be the first game that new offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki and new defensive coordinator Tom Allen will be coaching in game-like conditions, with fans, in the stadium — for Penn State. That’s an important distinction.

Allen, when he was head coach at Indiana, was on the Beaver Stadium visiting team sidelines guiding the Hoosiers vs. Penn State four times in his career. And he lost all four times — in 2017 (45-14), in 2019 (34-27), in 2021 (24-0) and on Oct, 28, 2023 (33-24). This time will be different, 168 days later, even if his team loses. Because his team will also win.

WEATHER AND ATTENDANCE

According to AccuWeather, the high temperature in State College on Saturday should be only 53 degrees, with periods of sun and clouds. Expect gusty winds inside the stadium to hit 20 mph.

The all-time attendance record for a Blue-White Game in Beaver Stadium is 75,000 on April 25, 2009, on a day when it was 80 degrees and sunny. Attendance at the 2023 scrimmage was 63,000 even though there was rain early in the contest.

Here’s a look at Blue-White Game attendance dating back the past 15 years, noting that 2020 contest was canceled due to COVID-19 and attendance at the 2021 game was restricted:

* Canceled due to COVID
** Attendance restricted due to COVID
Weather statistics according to the National Weather Service