The Obligatory PSU Podcast

The live experience of college football sets it apart from most other sports. There are few other settings where you can experience something as thrilling as the Penn State White Out. With some extra time on their hands and ample "air time" to fill, the guys seized the chance to reflect and swap stories from some of the best times they've had seeing the Nittany Lions play in person. Mike, Chris, a...

For many Penn State fans, one of the highlights of the entire quarantine came last week when NBC Sports replayed the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, Penn State's dramatic upset victory over to Miami to claim its second national title. The guys talk about that game, the experience of watching it back in 2020, hearing stories from former players on the Alumni Association livestream, and whether they can get into...

Before launching our upcoming multi-episode look back at great Penn State football from the past, the guys take a customary spin through all manner of nonsensical, non sequitur distractions and digressions. After an extended detour into topics ranging from Kevin's quarantine crankiness levels to traffic patterns at the grocery store, the boys finally come around to some college football talk. Ther...

In a time when the sports world has been turned completely upside down, the NFL Draft continues on undeterred (even though it will be on Zoom), and several Nittany Lions will look to hear their names called over the course of the three-day event. In this episode, the guys welcome back Eric Galko of Optimum Scouting to break down the prospects for Penn State's crop of draft-eligible players. While...

Derek Shuman is a Penn State senior who has been the viceroy (i.e. Editor-in-Chief) of Penn State Barstool for most of his college career, a time period that has seen the account's social media following grow to nearly a quarter million, the most of any Barstool college account in the country. From Pottsville, PA, Derek will be joining the mothership of Barstool in New York after graduation as a s...

What better time to stir the pot than during a global quarantine? With all four of the Obligatory cast back together again, the guys take on some sacred accepted "truths" of the Penn State community and argue that, in fact, they're more misconception and myth. Mailman wants football fans to lose to their fixation on winning, while Chris insists you need to stop obsessing over "4th and 5." But to n...

Time spent alone with your thoughts (and without any sports) during quarantine affords the opportunity to ponder the answers to life's big questions. In this episode, the guys (minus Mailman) talk about the York Daily Record's coverage of Brandon's work delivering food to frontline healthcare workers and then dive into a few such questions: With Bill O'Brien struggling to win in the playoffs and e...

Perhaps no two-year span in the history of Penn State football held a greater combination of good, bad, unforgettable, regrettable, remarkable, and confusing than 2013-2014. This time period saw arguably the greatest game in Beaver Stadium history in State's four-overtime win over Michigan in 2013 along with its biggest road upset (by point spread) versus Wisconsin in that same year. It also inclu...

Another week spent sheltering at home, and we can happily report that Mike the Mailman is safe and sound. In this episode, the gang fields Twitter questions from the audience (keeping fully on-brand, not a single serious or Penn State sports-related one in the bunch) while also trading stories on their respective observations of supermarket conditions and alcohol availability amid self-imposed iso...

Nobody wants to be the one who infected Mike the Mailman with coronavirus, so social distancing it is. For the first time in a long time, the full cast of The Obligatory PSU Pregame Show gets together on the podcast to catch up and commiserate on the most unusual state of world affairs. From Kevin's choice to ride out the contagion holed up on the New England coast to the gang's sense of disappoin...

Way back in 1989, Penn State students first invited an increasingly-recognizable campus postal worker to deliver mail to the dancers at the annual Dance Marathon (held in the White Building). Over three decades later, Mike the Mailman is still doing THON Mail Call. After Mike tells some stories about how the process has evolved into the massive operation that now happens each year at the Bryce Jor...

Most Penn Staters have heard of the unsolved murder in the Pattee Library stacks, but few know the whole story. This week, the guys sit down with true crime author Derek J. Sherwood to discuss his books " Who Killed Betsy? Uncovering Penn State University's Most Notorious Unsolved Crime " and " Nittany Nightmare: The Sex Murders of 1938-1940 and the Panic at Penn State ." Enjoy this not-to-be-miss...

Ben Jones is a Happy Valley native who launched onto the scene as an on-the-ground student reporter during the early days of the Sandusky scandal and has spent nearly a decade covering Penn State sports for StateCollege.com . Ben writes a regular column for the site and covers football, men's basketball, and men's ice hockey, the subject of his book Happy Valley Hockey . After years of faux-antago...

The new year is bringing what may be one of best Winter/Spring sports seasons for Penn State in many years; the men's ice hockey team is ranked in the top 10 and poised for a postseason run at the Frozen Four, while the men's basketball team has seen its first top 25 appearance in a quarter-century, and fresh off a home pasting of #21 Ohio State, stands a great chance of joining in March Madness f...

Back again, and still better than nothing. #Obligatory kicks off its 2020 podcasting season with a look back at 2019. Penn State entered the season on the heels of an underwhelming 2018 season that saw the Lions finish 9-4 with a Citrus Bowl loss to Kentucky, seeking to replace program legend Trace McSorley at QB (first with Tommy Stevens and eventually Sean Clifford). With their third 11-win fini...

Penn State's path to Pasadena still looks open after the final week of the regular season, but did a decidedly lackluster showing at home versus lowly Rutgers imperils the Lions' New Years Six chances if the Badgers somehow end up in the Rose Bowl? How might chaos over Championship Weekend impact State's postseason destination? Could the Lions somehow miss out on the New Year's Six altogether? Aft...

The Nittany Lions traveled to Columbus and, as the script called for, left in defeat. The manner in which they were defeated however - by a comparatively narrow margin (the 21-point underdogs lost by 11) and having finally forced the Buckeyes into a four-quarter game - left many fans with a good feeling about Penn State's bowl prospects and season overall. Chris, Kevin, and Mike the Mailman wrap u...

Over the last several years, Penn State and Ohio State have played in some of the most entertaining and memorable games in all of college football, and now the Nittany Lions and Buckeyes are set to run it back with a spot in the Big Ten Championship Game up for grabs. Although PSU's playoff aspirations are still very much in play, the path to the postseason runs through Columbus and perhaps the na...

Twenty years ago, the undefeated Penn State Nittany Lions, anchored by a stifling defense and led by a generational linebacker wearing number 11, had their eyes set on Big Ten and national championships, only to see those ambitions derailed by a Minnesota Golden Gophers program that hadn't been to the Rose Bowl since 1961. Time is a flat circle. Chris Buchignani, Kevin Horne, and Mike the Mailman...

Fresh off witnessing Penn State men's basketball's successful season opening victory (and 31.5-point cover) versus the Maryland College of Interior Design (or something), Chris Buchignani and Kevin Horne celebrated over beers at Kevin's apartment. The guys savored the admittedly-symbolic victory of Penn State's first-ever week as a member of the College Football Playoff Top Four, ruminated over th...

In the Fall of 2012, dark shadows loomed long over the Nittany Valley - pain, anger, confusion, uncertainty - and in the midst of this unprecedented turmoil, first-time head coach Bill O'Brien and a team of truly remarkable young men rose above it all to uplift an entire community, authoring an unforgettable season for the ages. The documentary film "Iron Lions" tells the story of "the greatest 8-...

The Michigan State Spartans have enjoyed unprecedented success against Penn State in recent years, finding new and awful ways to torture James Franklin's team and its fans, so much so that Chris and Kevin had already all but conceded PSU's first loss of the season. A foreboding repeat of 2017's infamous sloppy conditions did nothing to blunt their fears, but once the game kicked off, a still-undef...

The Michigan Wolverines, a team that has tormented Penn State throughout much of its Big Ten-ure (sorry), rolled into Happy Valley for a prime time White Out game highlighted by ESPN College GameDay's third visit to campus in as many years. Having fallen short of lofty preseason expectations and with criticism of head coach Jim Harbaugh mounting, the Maize and Blue were desperate for a season-defi...

Or, The Early Offensive Lamentations of 2019 What to take from Penn State's 45-13 victory over the Buffalo Bulls? While the final score may look like a standard, early-September blowout, the Lions struggled in several key areas of concern, and everything from the run game to offensive playcalling has Kevin Horne, Chris Buchignani, and even Mike the Mailman on edge. The guys dig into potential take...

Or, The best PG stories of college football's greatest offense The Penn State-Buffalo game marks the University's official celebration of the 1994 undefeated Big Ten (and National - we agree with the New York Times ) Champion Nittany Lions. With an offense that may have been the most potent in the sport's history, the team certainly ranks among State's all-time best, featuring legendary stars like...