Let's Go State! 11/22/25 vs. Nebraska

After alllllllllll that has happened during this Penn State football season, the team is one win away from the elusive winning streak from Major League II.

The Nittany Lions dominated the Cornhuskers, 37-10, and hopefully, forever and always, put to bed any talk of Matt Rhule being a head coach at Penn State.

On Friday, I wrote about the growing clarity (for me) in the coaching search. Not only did Penn State win big, but interim coach Terry Smith made some bold statements as to what he thinks of himself as a candidate.

But let’s back up real quick before we get into Smith. If you missed it, former HC James Franklin was hired this week at Virginia Tech.

This sets up a fascinating recruiting battleground for years to come. Franklin has done very well in the DMV. He convinced many of the region’s best players to go to Penn State and has relationships with coaches dating back to his time as an assistant at Maryland.

Behind the scenes, many of Franklin’s closest allies at Penn State are already gone. Mere hours after the announcement, close to a dozen staffers, including his two right-hand men, were out of the program’s directory.

The next wave of personnel to leave will be the hands-on coaches and the players. Although the players can’t technically leave until January’s portal opens, they can make their intent clear at any time.

So one half of this drama is re-secured and already playing out.

The other half got much more interesting on Saturday night.

As I wrote on Friday, there isn’t really a sure-fire external name that is known to the public. That could absolutely be different behind the scenes. But for now, we don’t have a slam-dunk candidate to get excited about.

The longer that goes on, the more the team wins, the more they perform, the more the players show their love for Smith …

Not only were many on the field publicly calling for Smith’s hiring after last night’s dub (see below), but there is an interesting subplot beginning to build.

Tery Smith is a Penn Stater through and through. He played wide receiver in the late 80s and early 90s under Joe Paterno. He had been on Franklin’s staff almost since day one of Franklin’s tenure at Penn State, beginning in 2014.

Smith has the respect of old-school fans and alumni because of his contributions as a player, and he’s also been responsible — as one of the lead recruiters — for many of the relationships and players brought to campus since 2014.

If anyone has a deep Rolodex of connections, it’s Terry Smith.

Not only that, but Smith has already shown much more of a willingness to talk about and honor Paterno. Say and think what you want about that chapter in the program’s history, but the man is still a legend. The shadow lingers, the myth still applies.

On national television, Smith was wearing a button that said “409” across (the number of wins Paterno had at Penn State), intersecting with “Joe” down the middle.

For so many reasons, Franklin rarely spoke of Paterno.

Then you have what’s going on during the national TV broadcast. Not only are the 90k+ fans in the stands chanting for Smith to be hired — with Kraft on the field and Rhule in the building — but Michael Robinson, the legendary QB for the 2005 team, now an analyst for NBC Sports, might as well come out as Smith’s campaign manager.

Robinson spoke candidly about how many former players have begun to put their support behind Smith. That extends now, according to Robinson, to many of the current players (as seen postgame). Robinson reported that many of the players considering leaving would stay if Smith were given the full-time job.

There is a whole other conversation to be had about the portal and roster retention, but suffice it to say that statement raises eyebrows.

The studio crew was less enthusiastic about a Smith hiring, saying that he doesn’t have “national appeal.” I’ve thought about that a lot since last night and now. My conclusion is that it doesn’t matter. Penn State has money. That’s what matters.

More importantly, Smith can manage a locker room. He said it himself postgame, for the first time, publicly declaring the players in the locker room to be his.

So the momentum is shifting. The language is changing.

We have no idea what Kraft is thinking.

We have almost no idea how this will play out.

But the Lions 247 hosts made a good point in that Kraft has to be more careful now. Not only does he risk losing Smith entirely, when a lot of people thought he’d be a no-brainer to be on the next staff, but Kraft is looking at potentially alienating a significant portion of the fan base if Terry Smith doesn’t get a real shot at the job.

I mentioned before the generations that Smith spans. Those people, the ones most involved with the program, be it boosters, season ticket holders, or former players … they are the ones with the deep pockets who can choose whether or not to continue to support Penn State football.

If it gets ugly and Smith essentially gets pushed out, how many of those former players from the Franklin era are going to publicly support the next coach? How many are going to show up for recruiting battles, at homecoming celebrations, and beyond?

They say that emotion shouldn’t play into a decision like this. But maybe that’s where we’ve gone wrong as a society. College football is big money; the logical thing would be to find the proven winner. But college football is still, at its core, illogical in many ways.

Hiring Smith, emotion be dammned, isn’t a move that will kill the program.

But this is why Pat Kraft gets paid to do what he does. He’ll need to sort through all the nuance and come to a strong conviction. His livelihood and future at Penn State depend on it.

All that I hear is that Penn State wants this to be wrapped up as soon as possible after Saturday’s game at Rutgers. So we are down to the final week, maybe two, of all this speculation, and now, true drama.

But for one night, there was a clear winner in Happy Valley, and a positive emotional charge that hadn’t been felt for a long time. Time will tell if it was a blip in the story or the blossoming of a new chapter in Penn State football history.