Contender or pretender: Views vary wildly on how Lions will fare

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Penn State was ... wait for it ... Oh yes, it was the great pretender each of the past two seasons.

Hey, if I got the song stuck in your head now, go ahead and give it a listen below before reading on!

Man, that is great stuff from The Platters.

Anyway ...

In 2020, the Nittany Lions were ranked No. 7 in the preseason, then proceeded to have the worst start ever (0-5) for a preseason top 10 team. That season, of course, comes with a giant asterisk because of the COVID craziness, but it still counts in the history books that Penn State finished 4-5.

Last season, Penn State won an ugly game at Wisconsin to start, then beat Auburn on its way to a No. 4 national ranking. Talk about being a great pretender, the Lions went from sprinting out to a 5-0 start to limping to a soul-crushing 7-6 finish, in no small part because of a very badly timed injury to QB Sean Clifford.

So much was expected from Penn State the past two years, but the team failed to meet expectations in colossal fashion, going 11-11.

Could this year be the complete opposite? The Lions enter Thursday's season opener at Purdue unranked in either major poll and overlooked by a lot of people, yet there's still a lot of talk out there that this team could surprise everyone with a stellar season.

Opinions are all over the place about Penn State's potential fate this season, and there's no place to better witness that than to look at CBSSports. In their Big Ten overrated/underrated survey, they have the Lions listed as both one of the league's most underrated teams and one of the most overrated.

In listing Penn State as his most overrated team, veteran scribe Dennis Dodd wrote:

The Big Ten East is always a bear. The Nittany Lions need bear repellant because this season they're not in the class of Michigan, Ohio State and Michigan State. Sean Clifford in his last season will be a factor, but nine wins would be an upset. James Franklin slumped last season after the loss of Clifford against Iowa. That was the difference. Penn State just doesn't measure up against powerhouse Ohio State, Michigan and a Michigan State squad that could make a run at 10 wins again (after winning 11 in 2021).

But three of the CBSSports writers -- Tom Fornelli, Shehan Jeyarajah and Chip Patterson -- all chose Penn State as the Big Ten's most underrated team. Here's what Patterson wrote:

Two years of falling well short of expectations have resulted in Penn State going into 2022 unranked in the preseason poll for the first time in six years. The Nittany Lions were a much better team than their 7-6 record might indicate last season, but I think the big step forward comes not just from getting better bounces in close games but from an infusion of young talent -- especially at the running back position -- that will create a spark offensively. Penn State is a top-25 caliber team and potentially the third-best team in the Big Ten; 2022 will be the rebound that proves this is one of the pace-setters in the conference. -- Patterson (also Fornelli, Jeyarajah)

ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit picked Penn State as his sleeper team this season.

“I think Penn State has a team and some key spots with some leadership to bring it back and I think people are maybe underestimating Sean Clifford,” Herbstreit said this past week. “I think Sean Clifford, when he’s healthy, can make plays so I think Penn State has a shot to be a sleeper.”

OK, so which is it?

Will Penn State wind up overachieving and becoming a contender in the Big Ten and on the national stage? Or underachieving and being a pretender for the third straight year?

We may not have to wait long at all to see which direction the Lions will end up taking. The opener at Purdue very much could be a season-shaping kind of game -- with a victory possibly pointing toward 9 or 10 wins, or a loss foreshadowing a 7-5 type of campaign.

For definition sake, what shall we consider to be a contender, and what would be pretender?

From my view, I'll put the cutoff at nine wins. For starters. But just nine wins with lopsided losses to Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State still may not be enough, because that would probably result in at least a fourth-place finish in the Big Ten East.

Nine wins with at least one coming against one of those division foes might be enough to make this a successful season.

Anything less than nine wins, and for me this season would fall into the pretender category. Not that an 8-4 record would be terrible -- we have to keep in mind that Penn State isn't ranked to start the year -- but in all honesty, 8-4 should NEVER be good enough at Penn State, under just about any circumstances.

Vegas has Penn State's over/under at 8.5 wins, which is spot in, if you ask me.

Beat that total, and Penn State will be a contender for a top 15 finish. There's a lot of good in that.

Finish on the under side, and we're talking borderline top 20-25 ranking, depending on lots of factors. The result of the bowl game, probably against a pretty decent team, then would be the ultimate deciding factor on the contender vs. pretender debate.

GIGER COUNTERS

Some quick hitters from the opening weekend of the college football season.

* Scott Frost continues to do a horrendous job at Nebraska. The Huskers fell at Northwestern, 31-28, thanks to some terrible defense and an even worse decision by Frost. His team was up 28-17 in the third quarter when Frost made the idiotic decision to try an onside kick. I'm telling ya, it was one of the worst decisions you'll see in college football all season.

Northwestern recovered the onside kick, went on to score a touchdown to pull within 28-24 and wound up winning the game.

The only thing I can say positive about Frost is that he admitted after the game that the call was a mistake. A lot of coaches would have pulled the bravado BS of "I would do the same thing if given a chance to do it again," but Frost didn't go that route.

Here's what he told reporters after the game:

"I made that call so that's on me. At that point in the game, I thought all the momentum was on our side. I thought if we got it, we could end the game.

"You can't really foresee them scoring 14 straight and us sputtering after we played well to start the second half on offense. Again those are excuses. If I had (to do) it over, I wouldn't make the call."

Frost's tenure at Nebraska has been atrocious, and it's likely to come to an end soon. Saturday's loss dropped his record to 15-30 with the Huskers, who went 3-9 last year and were in desperate need of something good to happen to start their season.

Instead, Frost made national news for a pathetic reason last week when he bragged about how there were 15-20 vomits each practice among the offensive linemen because they were working so hard.

What the hell? How stupid does a coach have to be to say something like that in this modern era, after we've had several incidents over the years of college and high school athletes dying from getting overworked in practice?

Frost walked the comment back a bit a few days ago, saying he "might have exaggerated," but goodness, talk about a complete and total lack of understanding and lack of leadership.

Word quickly spread Saturday that Nebraska would owe Frost a $15 million buyout if it fired him right now. But if it waits until Oct. 1, the buyout figure drops to $7.5 million. So, it looks like he has one more month left to prove he's not a terrible coach.

The Huskers play North Dakota, Georgia Souther, Oklahoma and Indiana over the next four games, so those likely will determine Frost's fate.

* Staying in the Big Ten, here's the latest nutty thing Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh is doing:

I actually like when people think outside the box and do quirky things. But man, Harbaugh takes the cake with all the wacky stuff he does, from a sleepover at a recruit's house, to not releasing his team's roster to now this.

What a kook.

But, the Wolverines won the Big Ten last year, so we no longer can say that Harbaugh has been a complete failure at Michigan.

* In case you missed it, there was this really cool video released a few days ago of Penn State walk-on punter Barney Amor getting told by Eli Manning that he is being put on scholarship. Manning was visiting practice. Amor is expected be the Lions' starting punter this season.

I love these videos!

* The name Ta'Quan Roberson was in the news Saturday, and this time you really gotta feel for the young man.

The former Penn Stater, who had a rough go it at Iowa last season, transferred to UConn and won the starting QB job for Saturday's opener at Utah State. He led a touchdown drive, completed 1-of-2 passes and carried three times for 8 yards, then went down with a right knee injury.

The severity of the injury is unclear, but man, that is just some terrible luck for Roberson. Here's hoping for him to be OK and to get another chance at playing for the Huskies.