The Obligatory PSU Podcast

Aaaaaand... we're back. Roughly six months into the Matt Campbell era in Happy Valley, Penn State is sinking like a stone in the national recruiting rankings, repeatedly beclowned by former bluechip commits who ultimately spurned the Nittany Lions for the likes of Nebraska and Rutgers. Chronically-online, minutiae-obsessed superfans are wringing their hands raw. Meanwhile, the ranks of the unplugg...

Penn State's 2025 football season officially came to a close with the Nittany Lions' 22-10 victory over Clemson in the Pinstripe Bowl. While both rosters were limited by player injuries and opt-outs, interim head coach Terry Smith and a Penn State team that went to hell and back over 12 regular season games plus the bowl both got to leave the stage as winners. The guys give their final thoughts on...

As calendar year 2025 approaches its end, the guys pour some egg nog, gather around the yule log, and retell the long and winding tale of a crazy year in Penn State football. Sure to warm your heart and freeze your blood, it's the perfect distraction from (or contribution to) your holiday season stress. Check out our Pinstripe Bowl preview on this week's Pregame Show: https://youtu.be/f7rWyWasBLY?...

Penn State football has a new head coach! It may have taken Pat Kraft a couple of months, cost us a recruiting class, and ended with a stranger-than-fiction leaked audio scandal destined for memetic infamy, but Penn State's AD got his man in former Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell. The guys react to Campbell's introductory press conference - expanding on their thoughts from The Obligatory PSU P...

Mercifully overshadowed by the real news of the day (Matt Campbell to PSU), the largely innocuous leaked audio of athletic director Pat Kraft's behind-closed-doors meeting with leaders of the football team put one final, bizarre turd in the punch bowl of Penn State's wild, wacky, embarrassing, and yet somehow pretty successful head coaching search. We discuss the fallout and call for a ceasefire i...

Is it gonna be Kalani Sitake? Jeff Brohm? Some shadowy mystery candidate? And whoever it ends up being, will that guy actually have a roster left to coach by the time he gets here? As we all sit on increasingly uncomfortable pins and needles awaiting resolution of Penn State's marathon head coaching search, the guys ponder whether Pat Kraft ever really had a plan at all and try to tie up some othe...

BONUS CONTENT: As hinted at during this week's show, we couldn't let the Terry Smith momentum pass - along with quite possibly our last (God willing) opportunity to speculate about Penn State's head coaching search - without looping in Obligatory's two favorite Nittany Lions Lettermen. Before you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, enjoy a side old school football talk and tough truth telling as both...

TER-RY!  TER-RY!  TER-RY! The Beaver Stadium crowd chanted for one of their own as he'd just vanquished a fellow Nittany Lion in a battle of Paterno legacies leading hobbled blue bloods. Kaytron Allen became Penn State's all-time leading rusher. A disappointing team that didn't give up on their season battled back to within striking distance of bowl eligibility, and at least for a day, the fans ha...

Penn State's former coach, James Franklin, has officially locked down his next gig. Penn State's current coach, Terry Smith, got his first win, brought home the Land-Grant Trophy, and then brought down the house with an emotional press conference when he explained exactly what it means to him to be leading the football program at his alma mater. The guys talk about the future of Franklin at Virgin...

From the players to the coaches to the fans, everybody brought their Saturday best against Indiana, but in keeping with the theme of this cursed season, it wasn't enough. The Hoosiers prevailed, and in heart-breaking fashion, narrowly avoiding a costly upset loss and denying Coach Terry Smith and the beleaguered Penn State fanbase the signature win they deserve. And yet amid that disappointment th...

Following the annual dispiriting loss to Ohio State - somehow both more AND less discouraging than usual - the unranked Penn State Nittany Lions return home to face undefeated and second-ranked Indiana as double-digit underdogs... IN FOOTBALL. What is this world coming to? And what's next? Real "wrath of God" type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty...

Bye Week's over now. Back to the real world. Penn State didn't get the win in Terry Smith's debut as interim head coach versus Iowa, but they did cover the spread for the first time this season. Can the Nittany Lions make it a streak and keep the margin within three touchdowns in Columbus? It seems like the best a beleaguered Nittany Nation can hope for. The guys ponder PSU's quest for small comfo...

Time to refocus on football, concentrate on all that lies ahead, and make an uplifting episode about the future and its boundless possibilities. Or at least that was the plan for this week. Then Horne got into the good stuff, and, well, it turns out we're not all the way over the breakup just yet. Maybe next week.  After all, just like the Penn State football team's season and the Athletic Departm...

What began with such promise and hope in the wake of Bill O'Brien's departure has now come to an end in a fashion heretofore unseen at Penn State. James Franklin has been relieved of his duties as head football coach of the Nittany Lions. Athletic Director Pat Kraft has addressed Nittany Nation about the decision and interim head coach Terry Smith, a Nittany Lion through and through, has previewed...

From bad to worse to inconceivable (and yes, we know what it means). After another picture-perfect afternoon and wonderful weekend of celebration in Happy Valley was soured by an inexplicably dysfunctional football performance, Kevin and Chris trudged their way down from Beaver Stadium to Landon's Downtown studio to lay down some instant reactions. "Enjoy" this little bonus content in its audio fo...

FRODO glances at SAM ... he is WEEPING. CLOSE ON: FRODO wrapping an ARM around SAM’S SHOULDER. FRODO  (calm) I'm glad to be with you, Samwise  Gamgee, here at the end of all things. HIGH WIDE: TWO TINY HOBBITS waiting to die amid a cataclysmic landscape ... LAVA erupts around them ... FIREBALLS rain down from the sky. We SLOWLY FADE TO BLACK... Happy Homecoming. Go State. HOSTED BY: Brandon Noble...

Welp.... Nothing quite like a fresh Obligatory when the guys are (sadly) at their best to cure what ails ya. Uncurl yourself from the fetal position, take your medicine, and crawl back into the saddle, because UCLA beckons, and you know you're too dumb, addicted, and masochistic to resist Saturday's siren song. HOSTED BY: Brandon Noble , Mike "The Mailman" Herr , Kevin Horne , Chris Buchignani The...

PREEMPTIVE THERAPY! For us (some of us at least)? Certainly. For you too? Maybe also yes. Every so often, there comes a crucial inflection point so fraught with meaning and pregnant with possibility, mere contemplation of its monumental consequence can bring the beholder to the brink of insanity. Such is the state of affairs for much of Penn State's fan base leading up to the third-ranked Nittany...

There's a shortage of folks who can seamlessly code switch between profane tirades over football minutiae and waxing poetic about the magic of the Nittany Valley, and the cast of this progrum oversamples that population to an absurd degree. With Noble again sleeping off old age this week, Mailman, Horne, and Buchignani are left to fill another hour-ish of nominally Penn State football-related #con...

Two games into a purported national championship run, the Nittany Lions are playing like their national ranking - number two. Packed with the sort of therapeutic soul-searching, gut-wrenching overreactions to what, at the end of the day, was a 34-0 victory over a nothing opponent in early September that has made Obligatory the go-to Penn State podcast for mentally imbalanced fans across the intern...

Thanks to the podcast's Fall 2025 sponsor: Gold Hen   *Use promo code MAILMAN at checkout To whatever extent a powerhouse football program grafted onto an R1 land-grant university can have a meaningful relationship with a billion-dollar multinational sneaker company built on, let's say, questionable labor practices, that is the sort of partnership Penn State formed with Nike. Back in the halcyon d...

Once again Chris is joined by fellow LION 90.7fm alum Mike Levine, to analyze the Nittany Lions roster, this time turning to the defense. James Franklin poached Jim Knowles, who many consider to be the sharpest defensive mind in the modern game, away from national champion Ohio State only days after the confetti fell on the Buckeyes, making Knowles the highest-paid defensive coordinator in college...

Per Obligatory tradition, one of our most popular features returns: the Penn State football preview in which Chris enlists the assistance of fellow LION 90.7fm alum Mike Levine, to analyze the Nittany Lions roster in two installments, beginning with the offense. As undergrads, they brought their half-dozen listeners such unforgettable gems as Joe Paterno's record-breaking 324th career win versus O...

As if the excitement and national hype - and the attendant dread and pressure that accompany them - couldn't get any more intense, Penn State made its AP preseason poll debut at #2, receiving only a handful fewer first-place votes than top-ranked Texas. State's dizzying perch near the top of the charts is the topic of conversation, but not without a characteristic diversion, this time in the form...

There's no denying it: Excitement is in the air in Happy Valley. Autumn's arrival always brings the energy of students returning to campus and the anticipation of another Penn State football season, but the attention and enthusiasm swirling around this year's version of the Nittany Lions is something special. With Penn State debuting at #3 in the Coaches Poll and a litany of national talking heads...