Eli Manning's 'Chad Powers' phenomenon the gift that keeps on giving

ALTOONA, Pa. -- You would think a few days after Penn State demolished Auburn, 41-12, that everyone would be talking about the huge victory when it came to the Nittany Lions.

But that's not the case.

Everybody is talking about something else ... make that someone else.

Chad Powers.

This guy:

If you still haven't seen the video from Eli Manning's "Eli's Places" episode, stop reading right now. Just stop, click on the play button above and check it out. Because it's glorious. You'll then probably want to watch it again and again.

It's also wonderful for Penn State football, because it's the kind of thing that keeps the program in the news for all the right reasons.

Again, by the time Monday night rolled around, nobody was talking about the Auburn game any longer.

It was all about Chad.

Chad Powers.

Sup?

And here's some wonderful news: This will not be the last we see or hear from Chad Powers, you can guarantee it. If the tweet below is correct, you would think the entertainment executives would already be thinking about a TV show or recurring skit or something.

James Franklin was asked not one, not two, but three different questions about Chad Powers during his press conference Tuesday. That is extremely rare, for those who follow the press conferences, since there's usually only ever one question about any topic.

But Chad isn't just any topic. The substitute teacher and part-time carpenter is a former homeschooled kid who didn't get very good grades because his mom was his teacher and she wasn't very smart. Oh, but she was a good football coach, and Chad can throw a ball 60-65 yards.

How did this whole Chad Powers thing come about? Franklin addressed that with a lengthy answer.

"We got a pretty good relationship with the with the Manning family," the coach said. "Sean (Clifford) has been able to go do the Manning Passing Academy every year, which is great, and we've had quarterbacks before Sean ... be able to go to the Manning Passing Academy, which is unbelievable event. ... I've been able to get to know Archie through that, as well as the National Football Foundation and some other things.

"When they reached out about doing this," Franklin noted, "obviously we wanted to be a part of it because I think Eli's done a great job with all of this. He's also a regional guy, lives in New Jersey, obviously did tremendous things with the Giants. So when he reached out about doing this, all those things factored in. But at the end of the day for me, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to disturb our process of what we needed to do and not become a distraction."

Manning visited Penn State the first week of school and transformed into the Chad Powers character for a walk-on tryout. Franklin said they were able to do 99 percent of it without interfering with Penn State's normal routine.

"I think I had to give them 10 minutes of my time, which took time away from either lunch or my walk, which was good," Franklin said, before later adding, "And then it was also cool. We were able to couple it with what you guys saw with (punter) Barney (Amor) being able to get get his scholarship, which was cool. So it just worked out. And it was something that I thought was kind of unique and different."

So unique and different, it turns out, that it has earned rave reviews from pretty much everyone. Manning's oddball character seems to be universally beloved already, which has happened at light speed, and that's tough to do in today's world.

The Penn State football brand benefits from all of this in a big way because, just a few days after beating Auburn, the program is flying high internally and externally on and off the field.

Franklin said he didn't know when the Mannings were going to release the Chad Powers stuff, but it came at a perfect time after the Auburn win.

This is the kind of thing that puts Penn State in that "cool" category when it comes to national media, football fans and recruits, simply because it is being so well reviewed and consumed. The fact that it came out two days after more than 4 million people watched the Auburn game -- making it the highest-rated college football game of the weekend -- cannot be a coincidence, as the Mannings struck while the iron was hot.

I asked Franklin about this sort of thing helping Penn State's brand because it's considered so cool by everyone.

"Yeah, I think your point is a good one," he said. "This is a game. It should be fun for the players, for the coaches, for our fans, for our alumni, for the community. And although the videos that everybody puts out -- the hype videos and all those types of things -- are good and cool and they serve a purpose as well, providing other opportunities to kind of peek behind the curtain shows some personality and allows people to see some of these things and have fun.

"There's value in it," he added. "I don't think there's any doubt about it."

Here's the entire episode of "Eli's Places:"