The Obligatory PSU Podcast

Listen to guest Miriam Colvin's award-winning podcast: https://soundcloud.com/miriam-colvin/competition-with-the-best With Spring football and the NFL Draft in the rearview, the guys turn their attention to exploring some of the interesting stories and people in and around the Nittany Valley. Penn State freshman Miriam Colvin had only tried producing a podcast once before, but when she decided to...

Six Penn State Nittany Lions were taken in the 2021 NFL Draft, with linebacker Micah Parsons and edge rusher Odafe (Jayson) Oweh going in the first round. Tight end Pat Freiermuth headed to Pittsburgh via the second round, and three other Lions - defensive end Shaka Toney and offensive linemen Michael Menet and Will Fries - going off the board consecutively in the seventh. Penn State (and LION 90....

Which Nittany Lions will hear their names called (and when) in the 2021 NFL Draft? ESPN pro football analyst Matt Bowen joins the show to evaluate Penn State's prospects in the 2021 draft class, including Micah Parsons, Jayson Oweh, Pat Freiermuth, and Shaka Toney. Matt was a four-year letterwinner as a safety at Iowa, earning second-team All America and first-team All Big Ten during his college c...

Why have one real Blue-White Weekend when you can hold two fake ones instead? Well, for plenty of reasons, of course, but after the last 12 months, you take whatever you can get. After holding an open football scrimmage (or practice or something) for Penn State freshmen a week prior, the Nittany Lions returned to Beaver Stadium for their 15th and final practice of the Spring season and gave Univer...

After graduating from Penn State in 2013 with a degree in Finance, Rob Lawless began work at the global consulting firm Deloitte, later moving on to start-up venture RJ Metrics. When that company was acquired in 2015, he turned his full attention to meeting 10,000 new people and spending an hour with each of them. To date, Rob has met over 3,500 people from 35 states and 60 different countries, al...

Only freshmen and reporters were allowed inside Beaver Stadium for what turned out to be the first of two Fake Blue-White Saturdays (with the next to follow a week later for seniors), so the guys enlisted the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 's Penn State football reporter Nubyjas Wilborn to share insights and observations on this first look at the 2021 Nittany Lions. The defensive front seven and heralded...

Fake Blue-White Saturday is upon us, so why not mark the occasion by squeezing the last droplets of #content from a traditionally substance-free weekend that this year is a literal non-event? Great friend of the show Mike Levine, Buchignani's former student radio broadcast partner on The LION 90.7fm , joins the show to help review key storylines at each position group on offense and defense as Pen...

More feeding the #content-starved beast with morsels of news and insight plumbed from the depths of Penn State Spring Football coach and player interviews. Former Nittany Lions offensive lineman Keith "Goon" Conlin (1991-95) of The Lion Country Kia Goon & Ironhead Show sits in with Brandon, Chris, and Mike the Mailman. Discussions cover the importance of returning to "real" Spring football in...

Spring football is back in Happy Valley for the first time in nearly two years, and for a program that struggled mightily through 2020 without the benefit of offseason practices, its return has been warmly received by coaches, players, and fans. With James Franklin, several Nittany Lions assistant coaches, and multiple players addressing the media each week, we'll be sharing some highlights along...

What a mess. For many years now (and several decades prior, really), the NCAA and its member schools have been losing ground in their seemingly-hopeless battle to preserve the concept of "amateurism," which they view as the basis for college sports. It's a system that has walled college athletes off from the benefits of skyrocketing revenues. Even as the business of college sports has prospered, m...

SI.com's Penn State reporter Mark Wogenrich returns to the show to talk about the transition from the bad, fake season of 2020 to the critical offseason and Spring practices of 2021. After sharing a few recollections of the bizarre experience of covering Penn State football from an empty Beaver Stadium, he offers observations from Spring football coach and player interviews, early thoughts on the...

Despite falling just shy of the overall team championship at the 2021 NCAA Wrestling Tournament, Penn State's second-place finish included a spectacular four-for-four title match performance on the final night of competition, crowning four individual national champions for the Nittany Lions. Jeff "Ironhead" Byers, the long-time voice of Penn State Wrestling and co-host of The Lion Country Kia Good...

Blue White Illustrated 's resident jack of all trades David Eckert visits the show to talk about the present and future for Penn State's men's basketball and ice hockey teams, two programs that, each in their own way, struggled through tough years after helplessly watching historic seasons get cut short by the pandemic in 2020. Is new head coaching hire Micah Shrewsberry the leader to finally brea...

Brandon continues recounting his football journey, this time focusing on his two seasons as a full-time starter for Penn State. These years spanned a "disappointing" encore to the 1994 Big Ten title in '95, punctuated by a legendary snow-swept home victory over Michigan and a bounce-back bowl win against Auburn, followed by an 11-2 season in '96, in which Brandon was named a senior captain and fin...

Re-releasing Part One of our interview with Obligatory co-host Brandon Noble ( originally published in August 2019 ) in advance of the all-new second installment coming next week. Brandon's got a great story about the intersection of life and football, and he tells it well. In this first interview, Brandon talks about the journey that took him across the country – from Southern California to Virgi...

Although adversity of all kinds plagued the Nittany Lions last season on their way to a historic 0-5 start, hope is on the horizon and help is on the way. From a recent commitment from blue chip quarterback Drew Allar, potentially the Franklin staff's biggest QB recruit thus far, to a series of roster, staff, and facility improvements, the signs are everywhere that Penn State football is poised to...

Water slides and flight simulators for all. Penn State's plan to spend millions on renovations and upgrades to the Lasch football building created a stir when Jay Paterno spoke out against it while Letterman and fellow trustee Brandon Short was equally outspoken in his support. Although the plan was approved to move forward, comments from LaVar Arrington fanned the flames of controversy, and the i...

If nothing else, the wild fake season of 2020 was history-making for the Penn State Nittany Lions, in ways both awful (0-5) and terrific (900 wins). From a wealth of young talent showing out at the skill positions to the many maddening instances of game mismanagement, the guys continue their reflection on the good and bad aspects of a season like none other here in Happy Valley. HOSTED BY: Brandon...

2020 was a year like none other for all of us, so it only makes sense that it was historic in all the wrong ways for James Franklin and the Penn State Nittany Lions. Before finally turning the page on a tumultuous fake season that saw PSU get out to its worst start in program history, the guys are taking one last, long, meandering look back on the things that made 2020 awful, and also maybe so bad...

The guys welcome in Coach Nick Codutti of ForTheBlogy.com to talk about the past and future of Penn State's offense under James Franklin. All season long, For The Blogy has been publishing game film analysis from Coach Codutti, including a recent feature on what to expect from new offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich . The Obligatory guys are big fans of everything FTB has brought to Penn State foot...

In a genuinely shocking power move, James Franklin relieved first-year offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca of his duties as Penn State's offensive coordinator to bring in newly-available superstar assistant Mike Yurcich, reportedly a favorite for the job a year ago before being lured away by big bucks at the University of Texas.  Ben Jones , Penn State beat reporter for StateCollege.com , joins t...

And we're back. After enjoying some time off for the holidays (just like Penn State), the guys return to wrap up the 2020 bowl season and dig into the surprising amount of early roster news for the Nittany Lions - from transfers and departures to recruiting to an influx of new blood via the transfer portal. Say what you will about the portal, it's here to stay (at least for the time being), so it'...

So that's that. You can close the book on Penn State's 2020 fake season. Unlike many teams across the country and most of their Big Ten peers, the Nittany Lions managed to play all of their scheduled games, which wasn't always a great thing. James Franklin's team stumbled out to an 0-5 start, the worst in school history, but rebounded to win its next four games, becoming only the ninth college pro...

The snow is falling in Happy Valley for early National Signing Day. In a year in which the Nittany Lions gave their fans plenty of reasons to worry about the health of the program, is a 28th-ranked recruiting class yet another cause for concern? The guys dig into that question before moving on to other targets, namely a hobbled Fighting Illini team that comes to Beaver Stadium without their head c...

Is this ostensibly the "Michigan State wrap-up show?" Yes. Does the conversation eventually meander its way back to some discussion of Penn State's 39-24 reclamation project against Sparty that moved the Lions to 3-5 on the year? Again, yes. Do Mike, Brandon, and Chris also seize on Kevin's absence as their "jailbreak" opportunity to run the discussion directly off the rails almost immediately? Fo...