The Penn State Football Show

Thoughts on 2009:

For me, personally, 2009 was a pretty boring football season all around. We have been spoiled the past few years with some awesome college football filled with shocking upsets (App. State over Michigan!! Stanford over USC) and unbelievably dramatic games (Boise State over Oklahoma, Texas over USC, Texas Tech over Texas). Maybe it’s just me, but this year just seemed to be kind of lacking. Overall I found myself much less interested in college football this year than I typically am. Nevertheless, I still watched my share of college football, so here are my thoughts on the past year:

We all pretty much agreed heading in to this season that Penn State’s schedule was set up beautifully for the Lions in 2009. The two biggest games, Iowa and Ohio State, were both at home. The game against the Hawkeyes was a night game at Beaver Stadium, and it was the Big Ten opener, with last year’s crushing last-second defeat at Iowa fresh on the minds of all players and fans. It was a recipe for great revenge for the Lions. The current state of Michigan football made this year’s trip to the Big House not nearly as intimidating as usual. Penn State dodged the Badgers on the schedule this year, and the non-conference opponents consisted of four cream puffs once again. Heading in to the season, I heard many Penn State fans express the same feelings that I had: An undefeated regular season was well in reach, and anything less would pretty much be a disappointment. Realistically though, most people knew that 11-0 is a lot to ask for, and a 10-1 mark is not too shabby.

We all know what happened. The Lions handled all of the opponents that they should have, and lost in the only two tough games that they played. I guess this is why it was kind of a boring season. But a lot of people take those wins for granted, when taking care of business each week is not as easy as people assume. It’s easy to sleep against an inferior opponent at some point during the season (Ohio State against Purdue, Iowa against Northwestern), but PSU managed to avoid this, and that should be commended.
The efforts against Iowa and Ohio State were very poor and disappointing, especially on the offensive side of the football, where they couldn’t do a thing. The early non-conference wins were pretty sloppy and ugly, but the team hit full stride in an impressive performance in Ann Arbor. Overall, a solid season, but again, with the way the schedule was set up for them, you couldn’t help but be a little disappointed.

So sitting at 10-2 after the regular season, it really came down to the Bowl Game to determine whether or not this year was a success. Win, and they notch a solid W over a tough SEC opponent that has been one of the nation’s premiere programs over that past 10 years. Lose, and it’s a 10-3 season with 10 wins that they were expected to win and 3 losses in the only three difficult games they had all year. I would call that an unsuccessful season.

The conditions at the Capital One Bowl were clearly horrendous, so it’s hard to take a whole lot from the game. It’s pathetic that the field was in such poor condition, but that’s a whole different discussion. I thought Penn State was clearly the better team in the game. They could have put it away by finishing off some drives, but settling for field goals kept the game close when it shouldn’t’ have been. The defense played great, shutting down LSU for almost the entire game. The offense moved the ball all game long, and the performance by the offensive line was very impressive. Perhaps they were aided by the conditions, but they were much more successful than LSU’s o-line, so perhaps not. It was a good game, and a very big win for Penn State and the Big Ten. With the bowl victory, I think you have to say that 2009 was a pretty good year for Penn State. Maybe not what we had hoped for, but it could have been much worse. You can’t complain about an 11 win season.