A few days later, after emotions subside, I agree. In fact, I didn't watch the game because I no longer want sports to ruin my day.
- at no time did I expect PSU to beat tOSU this year.
- At the same time, a chain is only as good as it's weakest link. Our WR room is vastly inferior to tOSUs. Ours is "OK" while their's is A-. I expected our Freshman to play but he didn't.
Glad to see some logic and good sense getting posted. I too kind of "missed" the tOSU game because I was pretty sure it would turn out the way it did and -- why go through the anguish of it?
* College football is very much a weakest-link sport. You can work around a weak unit, but it will limit the ceiling for a team. A less talented unit creates dominoes that fall and create obstacles for other units. If your receivers can't get separation or have the size and skill to win 50-50 balls, that allows a defense to stay closer to the LOS and clamp down on your running game. Not being able to run the ball limits scores, first downs and hands possessions to your opponent, helping them wear down your defense.
In Franklin's early years the team lacked OL and DL talent and depth. Now it's wideouts. If Ohio State has a weak unit, they usually fix it in a year or two -- they can do that because they're Ohio State. PSU has had trouble with wideout recruiting for 6 years now and just can't seem to fix it. God Franklin has tried, but changing wideout coaches almost every year hasn't fixed the problem.
* There's a really big difference between top 10-15 recruiting (where PSU averages out) and top 3 recruiting. And a big difference between a roster with a $20m NIL budget and whatever PSU's is.
* I've seen this asserted more and more lately and I think it's true -- college football outcomes at the highest level are 80 percent determined by roster -- talent. size, speed, depth. At the VERY highest level games are often decided by 2 or 3 superlative players -- like some of the Alabama QBs or Marvin Harrison. PSU gets lucky sometimes (Barkley, Godwin) but doesn't generally compete for such players.
* Coaching matters but it matters less and less the higher you go. Perfect example was Saturday. Andy Kotelnicki can scheme PSU to wins against top 10-15 teams. But against top 3 teams, schemes work less because players are so good and their athleticism can cancel out whatever advantage comes from creative play design.
* So -- be happy. PSU's a perennial top 10-15 team. PSU is not a national championship contender. Deal with it. A new head coach almost certainly would not magically lift PSU into the top 5 and would be much more likely to see PSU slide down to the lower reaches of the top 25-30.
Franklin is a great recruiter. He gets really good talent. Players love playing for him. But expecting him (or a successor) to win recruiting battles regularly with tOSU, Alabama, Georgia, Texas etc. and assemble a top 5 roster of players -- if you want to be realistic, that probably is not happening, given geography, talent, culture. No PSU coach is going to defy the laws of physics of college football. Of course mathematically possible but realistically it ain't happening. PSU is PSU, Ohio State is Ohio State and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.
