The Obligatory PSU Podcast

Penn State narrowly escapes what would have been a devastating loss to a terrible Indiana Hoosiers team and instead travels to College Park to face nose-diving Maryland with a hint of momentum from Drew Allar's game-winning deep strike. Will this faint hope prove to be merely a mirage, or did Allar's first interception unlock something crucial in his development as a quarterback? The guys review t...

Another meeting of top tens for the Nittany Lions. Another matchup with the Buckeyes. Another trip to the Horseshoe. And yet another predictably miserable result. For nine months, we built this team up as the one that was capable of breaking the cycle and finally putting Penn State into the four-team playoff field in its final year. When the moment of truth arrived, nothing was different. The guys...

A fair reading of James Franklin's decade-long tenure at Penn State is that the entire thing has led up to this Saturday's game in Columbus, a meeting of undefeated national powers pitting the #7 Nittany Lions against the #3 Buckeyes. Penn State's roster has never been deeper. The teams have never been more evenly matched. The stakes has never been higher, and victory could vault the program to le...

Penn State made the rounds of all the national college football news outlets this week and even managed to rile up the famously even-tempered denizens of Twitter, all without even playing a game on Saturday. With the #6 Nittany Lions coming off a Bye and UMass up next on Homecoming, the week's big news came from James Franklin's Tuesday press conference. The guys take advantage of the calm before...

Your Penn State Nittany Lions roll into the Bye week 5-0 and ranked #6 in the nation, featuring a dominant defense and an offense that, despite averaging over 40 points per game, plays with maddening inconsistency. Kevin checks in with a report on the crypt-like silence of Ryan Field and the strong contingent of traveling Penn State fans, and all the guys weigh in on takeaways from another 30+ poi...

One, on its own, is an isolated incident. Two in a row is the start of a streak. So this podcast is going streaking. The guys are back this week to revel in the misfortune of the Iowa Hawkeyes, heap praise on the White Out crowd, and look ahead to Penn State's trip to Evanston for a sleepy 11am local kickoff against the Northwestern Wildcats. Come for the schadenfreude; stay for the Utz potato chi...

A few minor issues. A couple of miscues. Several handfuls of chocolate chips, and all the Utz chips you can eat for the next 32 years. The full cast reassembles to start playing themselves into game shape with #24 Iowa coming to Happy Valley to face off against #7 Penn State in the White Out. In this, the era of retreads, reboots, and canceled TV shows coming back for a second (or third) bite of t...

Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, or brain-eating zombies rising from the dead, or Notre Dame football underperforming unearned lofty expectations - the Obligatory podcast is back, and with it, perhaps a whiff of increased normalcy in our college football lives. After surviving a close call against Purdue in their now-traditional road conference opener and delivering a routine September ass-...

The format wasn't exactly a game, but if you traveled to Happy Valley or tuned to the Big Ten Network for exciting football action, your cause was already long since lost. Town and campus once again buzzed with the energy of excited students (many near the end of their Penn State journey) and returning alumni and fans; grills were fired up, and beer was drunk; the Sun did indeed come out (eventual...

The first "normal" Blue-White Weekend in nearly three years is nearly upon us, so Chris and Jim ruminate on the appeal of the overall event weekend, the scrimmage itself, and whatever possible nuggets of intel fans might expect to glean from this glorified practice that mostly offers a convenient excuse for a return trip home to Happy Valley. Will Penn State fans learn anything useful about the 20...

Every sports fan forms lasting connections with certain players on their favorite teams, whether because of skill, toughness, personality, or all three. Sometimes it's an unforgettable performance in a crucial moment, others we simply gravitate toward a certain player for reasons even we don't understand. When it comes to standout performers worth remembering, Penn State football fans have been bl...

What is your favorite memory of Penn State football? Practically every fan of the Nittany Lions has at least one play, moment, or game from which they can recall almost every detail - what happened, and where they were, how they felt, and who was with them, when it did. As KSN's Keystone Kickoff show looks back over Penn State football throughout the decades, Jim asked Chris for some of his own fa...

Astronomical payouts to star recruits, entire position groups, and even full recruiting classes have headlined the first year of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) monetization in college sports. Penn State hasn't managed any splashy numbers, and perhaps a pair of recently-announced NIL collectives can help change that. Are the Nittany Lions poised to catch up, or are they already hopelessly behind?...

With Penn State Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Sandy Barbour announcing her retirement plans, the search is on for the next person to lead State's athletics programs at a crucial juncture in the evolution of college sports. Jim and Chris discuss Barbour's legacy at PSU along with what qualities they'd want in the next athletic director and potential candidates for the job. FEATURING:...

In a very short time, the transfer portal has become the talk of the college football world, with the sport's de facto free agent market emerging as a key element in modern roster-building. Now that the dust has settled on the first normal season shaped by the wide-open transfer market, Jim and Chris assess the landscape and discuss which programs are having the most success in the portal and whet...

While starting quarterback Sean Clifford's decision to return and play one final season for the Nittany Lions may have divided Penn State's online fan base, KSN's Jim Galanti harbors no reservations about the value of Clifford's comeback choice. Jim and Chris break down the reasons they're glad Clifford will again don the Blue and White for the 2022 season. Remember to subscribe to the Keystone Ki...

All over the college football landscape, loyalties and fortunes (in every sense of the word) are shifting at breakneck speed as head coaches are making bigger moves for bigger money than ever before. With James Franklin locked up and Penn State focused on replacing any assistants swept up in the chaos, Jim and Chris survey the carnage and pass snap judgement on the winners and losers. Remember to...

After a brief update on the status of the regular podcast, Chris and Jim take a broader look at the landscape of college football and the mounting challenges to the four-team format of the first-ever college football playoff. Conventional wisdom tells us that expansion is inevitable - eventually - but could the move to include more teams in the postseason happen sooner than you think? A variety of...

With all the rumors swirling around James Franklin's future at Penn State and many talking heads insisting that certain jobs are obviously better than others, Jim and Chris take a step back to ponder what factors combine to actually make certain head coach positions "destination jobs." Does the conventional wisdom hold up that rabid fans, unreasonable boosters, over-the-top facilities, and fertile...

Maybe moral victories are the best we can hope for when it comes to Penn State versus Ohio State. As another year passes without a win over the Buckeyes (this time handing OSU its longest winning streak against the Nittany Lions - five games and counting), most of Nittany Nation seems satisfied that the team played well and didn't get embarrassed. How much of that stems directly from the team's in...

One relatively routine hit on QB Sean Clifford during the first quarter of the Iowa game produced a dramatic ripple effect on Penn State's 2021 season and, quite possibly, beyond. A dominating offensive performance that, had it been sustained, would have likely resulted in the Lions leaving Kinnick victorious and destined for the top two instead fizzled, and an undefeated season with championship...

Over four agonizing, rain-soaked quarters and 75 overtime periods only vaguely resembling the sport of football, what had mostly felt like a decidedly-different, and potentially-special, season for James Franklin and the Nittany Lions descended into depressingly-familiar disappointment, as Penn State slowly transformed a campaign full of promise and a Top 10 ranking into a disfigured wreck with a...

As the Nittany Lions prepare to return to action, Chris and Mailman are joined by Nathan Wilmot, the analytics columnist for For The Blogy , who has developed his own advanced metrics for quantifying the performance of college football teams. Nate looks back over Penn State's ups and downs through the first six games of 2021, a Top 10 half-campaign dominated by a defense that so far stands alongsi...

Even as the Nittany Lions chase another Big Ten title, fighting to defend a Top 10 ranking while battling the injury bug, it wouldn't be a season of the podcast without a couple of #Obligatory digressions, and what better time for one than coming off Penn State's bye week? (Boiler Up.) It has become increasingly difficult over the last 12 months for even the most casual college football fans to ev...

Hair metal rockers Cinderella perhaps put it best with  their 1988 hit: "Don't Know What You Got (Til It's Gone)."  Sean Clifford was shredding the vaunted Iowa Hawkeyes defense in hostile environs until an injury put him out of the game early in the second quarter. At that point, Penn State fans the world over, many of whom had harbored doubts about the third-year starter (and were rarely shy abo...