Penn State Football: Nittany Lions Look for Purpose Following Loss

The question is a tough one to answer – what is there to play for? In a functional sense the *point* of Penn State’s season came to an end on Saturday with the Nittany Lions falling to Michigan. There is probably a way that involves a great deal of mental gymnastics that Penn State could get back into the Big Ten East race, but that way is likely not grounded in a sequence of events that are reasonable. In turn as college football heads towards one final season of a four-team playoff, there’s no realistic path for Penn State to make that field.

In turn it is fair to ask what a football team – full of humans who want to achieve their goals – has to play for. It’s maybe a bit dramatic to frame things in such a binary fashion considering that most every team in American enters the year not reasonably expecting to make the playoffs, but Penn State has those dreams, and not unreasonably so. Days like Saturday might make achieving them feel far fetched, but it stands to reason that for all of the Nittany Lions’ woes, they gave both Michigan and Ohio State a better fight than most would have.

Nevertheless, the question remains.

“A lot can happen in college football,” Penn State quarterback Drew Allar said on Saturday. “We just have to stick together, keep sticking together, learn from it tomorrow, be critical of ourselves, but learn from it and continue to move on. At this point we need to bounce back this week in practice and just play our hearts out and we only get so many opportunities in football to actually play games we train 8-9 months out of the year. We only get to play football 3 months and that’s once a week, so we just have to cherish all the moments that we have left with this team. There is no other group that I would rather go out and play with.”

There’s something to be said for the baseline enjoyment players ostensibly get from simply playing football. You don’t end up at Penn State because you don’t like playing the game and one imagines you’re gifted with a finite number of chances to do so. The hard part of course is that Penn State fans aren’t, in theory, buying tickets to watch players enjoy a hobby. They’re buying tickets to see the Nittany Lions win big games.

But when that doesn’t happen, there’s only so much anybody can do to make losing any easier.

“There’s really nothing I can say that’s going to make everybody feel better,” tight end Theo Johnson added. “We have a lot more football to play but keep playing for each other and keep getting better.”

While the hours following the second major loss of Penn State’s season might not be the best time to opine about the Nittany Lions’ bowl destinations, Penn State does still have an opportunity to finish the regular season with double-digit victories, head to a New Year’s Six Bowl and transition into a new Big Ten conference among the better equipped teams in the league to compete for playoff spots. It’s not terribly sexy in the moment, but it’s something to play for. You can’t join a program wanting to build it and then stop trying just because you fell short of some of the biggest goals. That’s at least how Penn State offensive lineman Hunter Nourzad sees it.

“I think it’s pretty understood within our culture,” he said Saturday. “I think we have a really tight team. You know, we’re all playing for each other. At the end of the day, that’s kind of what makes it special here. It’s a brotherhood, and we’re all playing for each other. So, it’s kind of understood, that I need to get better. We all need to get better.”

So will Penn State’s season feel like a success when it’s all said and done? It’ll depend on who you ask, but if the Nittany Lions don’t find something new to play for, the answer could quickly become no.