ALTOONA, Pa. -- Penn State has the Blue-White Game coming up Saturday, it's gonna be 70-something degrees, and there could be 70-something thousand fans enjoying a gorgeous day at Beaver Stadium watching a team that will be ranked in the top 10 this fall.
Wow! What an awesome time to be talking football!
Except nobody's really been talking much lately about the actual football at Penn State.
The focus has been on NIL, politics, infighting, accusations, disrespect, elections, etc. I highly encourage you to go listen to the recent We Are podcast for my thoughts on all the nonsense involving the Jay Paterno, Brandon Short, Board of Trustees stuff.
Good lord. Do you think they're talking about any garbage like that right now at Alabama, or Georgia, or Clemson or Ohio State?
Of course not.
They're actually talking about, you know, football this spring.
But before we can discuss the football we're going to see Saturday afternoon, we've got to get the football coach's views on some of this off-the-field stuff that has dominated the Penn State news in recent weeks.
That's where we'll start this Blue-White Game edition of the midweek top five.
1. James Franklin weighs in on NIL problems
Franklin met the media Tuesday night after practice in University Park. He probably wanted to talk about football, but he obviously needed to be asked about the NIL stuff and Penn State's place in the college sports landscape.
Franklin had a lot of good stuff to say, including stressing once again that Penn State has lagged way behind in NIL.
“We still got a ton of work to do," the coach said. "We started in the first couple years where we said we were going to teach student-athletes how to be entrepreneurs. That was our NIL model. So, we were two years behind everybody else.
“I think over the last year we’ve made significant progress. But if you give somebody a two-year start in basically a three-year model, I think it’s pretty obvious.”
2. A BIG part of the problem ... errr, situation
Here's a GIGANTIC issue with regards to Penn State, and we simply cannot have a discussion about any of this stuff without addressing this elephant in the room.
Penn State has 31 varsity sports.
For better or worse.
The school loves having 31 varsity sports. The school has no intention, I believe, of ever reducing that number. The school wears it as a badge of honor that it provides so many opportunities for so many athletes.
LSU has 14 varsity sports.
Yeah, you read that right -- a measly 14.
Clemson has 19.
Alabama has 21.
Georgia has 21.
Ohio State has a whopping 36, which is incredible on the other end of the spectrum. Good for the Buckeyes for finding a way to make that number work and still be successful.
But you get the point, right? Penn State not only has way more programs than some of the peers it's trying to compete with in football, but the school also has a self-sustaining athletic department. That means all 31 sports have to be paid for, not by the university's general fund, but by the athletic department itself.
Very few universities in the country, particularly in major college football, have that kind of financial setup. (Sorry, I don't have the number available, but have always been told it's very low.)
Oh, and by the way, only three of those 31 programs make money at Penn State: Football ($50-plus million a year), men's basketball ($4 million), men's hockey (a few hundred thousand). So, obviously, football has to pay for everything.
But ... and this part is crucial:
Penn State still wants to make sure that all 31 programs are treated well and looked after and feel like they are giving the athletes the best experience possible.
That's fine and dandy. But almost all of it comes at the expense of spending even more money on football.
OK, so here's what Franklin said Tuesday about the university needing to do whatever it can to compete in the incredibly expensive college football arms race:
“When you’re Penn State and you’re in the Big Ten, the reality is if you choose and want to compete at the very highest level, you can’t pick and choose what you’re going to compete in. Whether it’s facilities, whether it’s staff size, whether it’s alignment, whether it’s NIL, whether it’s all these things. If you truly want to compete at the highest level, then you can’t say we’re going to be competitive in these three areas and not in this one.
“Where we are as a top 10 program," he continued, "those areas that you are behind become glaring, obvious issues."
He also added, "We’ve made up significant ground in the last year" with regards to football NIL.
In short, Franklin wants all the money he can get for the football program.
But you can bet that so, too, does every one of the other 30 coaches on campus.
3. This is where the bickering, infighting and disrespect come into play
Micah Shrewsberry wanted more money for basketball. He didn't like being last in the Big Ten in NIL, and he was right to complain about it.
And so, when he did that on a conference call a couple of months ago and was interrupted by a Board of Trustees member saying the university has 31 sports to look out for, well, that kind of thing probably didn't sit too well with Shrewsberry. That information, by the way, came from Trustee and legendary former Penn State football player Brandon Short.
It is true, though, that if you're gonna have 31 athletic programs, and NIL collectives are trying to help out all athletes, then it does stand to reason to some degree that a BoT member might have had to remind Shrewsberry of the 31 programs thing.
Both of these things can be true:
1. Shrewsberry had the right to get ticked off about being interrupted and/or being reminded of that fact, and ...
2. Whichever BoT member actually did the talking there was in fact correct in pointing out that all 31 programs need to be taken care of. Although tone, timing and speaking respectfully needed to be done in proper measure, and we have no idea if that was the case.
So again, the real problem here very well could be that Penn State has too many varsity sports programs to begin with, making it impossible to please everybody.
Now, about football ...
The beef between Short and folks like Jay Paterno, co-founder of the Success with Honor NIL collective, and Anthony Lubrano is all about a long-standing feeling by some that a few alumni-elected Board members do not have the best interests of the football program at heart.
I've stated repeatedly that I have no time for Jay and whatever it is he's doing at the university, and the same goes for Lubrano. I've long felt that they care more about clearing Joe Paterno's name and restoring his legacy than they do the current football team and Franklin winning a national title.
Their priorities are completely out of whack.
Short went so far as to say that a couple of Board members refused to shake Franklin's hand during a meeting. That is beyond absurd, if indeed it's true. Whether it is in fact true is a big question, because we only have Short's version of the events. And while we don't know for sure, he seemed to be talking about Jay and Lubrano.
Can you imagine Board of Trustees members having so little respect for the prominent head football coach that they would refuse to shake his hand?
What. The. Hell!
Anyway, all of this stuff has gotten so political, because Jay is up for re-election, and Short has endorsed other candidates.
Hey, did you know there's a spring football game to be played in three days?
Wouldn't it be nice to talk about that?
Before doing so, let me encourage everyone again to go listen to my We Are podcast down below on all this stuff. I spent a good 20 minutes dissecting it.
4. What we'll see in Saturday's scrimmage
Here's some good news: Franklin has said repeatedly that we'll see a traditional scrimmage game between two teams in the Blue-White Game, as opposed to some kind of gimmick setup like we've seen in recent years because of depth concerns.
I for one have always enjoyed seeing the actual football in the spring game, even if it always has been watered down. Quarterbacks still have to show accuracy and poise, receivers have to catch the ball, guys are getting hit and have to make tackles, and this is a chance for all the players to be out there playing in front of a huge crowd -- many for the only time in their careers.
No, we should never take one spring practice game too seriously, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be watching some things very closely to help us better understand the team and/or certain players.
For me, let's see what Beau Pribula can do in terms of throwing the ball. We've heard so much about his running ability and stuff, but if he ever has to take over for Drew Allar at some point, he's gonna need to be a very good, very accurate passer for Penn State to live up to its potential in the coming years.
5. Lions pick up another recruiting commitment
Penn State picked up a commitment Monday from cornerback Antoine Belgrave-Shorter, a 3-star prospect from Mandarin High School in Jacksonville, Fla. The Nittany Lions have recruited well in Florida in recent years, so it's no longer a surprise when they get a good player from there.
Belgrave-Shorter is the No. 87 prospect in Florida and No. 53 cornerback in the country, so he's not necessarily a glamorous prospect. He did have a lot of good offers, though, including from Pitt, Miami, Florida State, Ole Miss and Wisconsin.
Penn State now has eight commits in the class of 2024 and ranks No. 8 in the nation, per 247Sports.
