Penn State Football 2009-2010

The 09-10 season started off as expected, 3 straight wins over cupcake teams that any respectable Division-1 football squad should beat. Daryll Clark was throwing the ball well and the receiving corps was clicking, Evan Royster only totalled 102 yards in the first two games but finally broke the single game century mark against Temple in week 3. All was well in Happy Valley up until Iowa came to town. If it weren't for Iowa in the 08-09 season, the Nittany Lions would have gone 12-0 (but probably still would have lost to USC in the Rose Bowl, oh well). The hype around this game was electric, it was Whiteout Weekend and College Gameday was coming to State College on Saturday for the game. Lee Corso did his traditional mascot head pick 'em and as expected he donned the Lion head along with a white bathrobe (his wife likes that look at home too). As much as I would love to say that the Lions took care of business and beat the Iowa Hawkeyes that night, they did not, and in doing so earned themselves a 3-1 record along with a major question mark on the teams overall strength.
The next three games went very well, three straight wins including a 52-3 win over Eastern Illinois that let us see playing time from highly touted QB recruit Kevin "The Nuisance" Newsome. After the loss to Iowa, I did not know how the team would do against the remaining Big Ten powerhouses on the schedule, Michigan and Ohio State. In Ann Arbor, the Nittany Lions not only beat the Maize and Blue Nation, they made them "Hail to the Victors" as Graham Zug had 3 TDs himself. Two weeks later was the big game in Happy Valley, Ohio State was coming to town. The game opened with Terrelle Pryor and Daryll Clark rushing TDs and it looked like it was going to be a competitive game, but that soon changed. Ohio State took control and ended up winning the game 24-7, depression set in and walking out of the stadium I'm pretty sure I saw a Prozac tent with a line around the corner. After that game I did not care anymore (I felt like John Beckwith after Claire Cleary went off to marry Sack Lodge, you know the feeling), the possibility of a BCS bowl was pretty much gone and the Nittany Lions just couldn't win the big games that year. But, the Lions won their final two games and finished with a respectable 10-2 record going into bowl season.
Penn State landed the Capital One Bowl and were set to play the powerful LSU Tigers out of the SEC, arguably the best football conference in the NCAA. Honestly, going into this game I was skeptic, the Lions could not pull off the W against Iowa or OSU, so they would have no chance against the great LSU, right? Wrong. The final score was 19-17 in favor of the Nittany Lions, they capped off the season with a victory that can be credited to their defense, which only allowed 10 pts/game all year.
In The Future
Next year will be interesting, incoming recruit Paul Jones and Newsome will compete for the starting job but I anticipate that Newsome will be under center for the Lions in September. The defense is losing major stars like Jared Odrick and Sean Lee, but the roster is so deep there is little reason to worry. Joe Paterno turned 83 on December 21, 2009, and may he have many more seasons just as successful as this one to come.