PSU’s pain continues.  With Sports Illustrated’s trumped up story, pending lawsuits, upcoming trials, and bowl bans, it won’t end soon.

But someday it will.  So, here’s a letter to those born the year of the scandal, the Penn State class of 2031.

Dear Graduate,

Today your Penn State experience concludes, an experience profoundly different from mine, which ended 50 years ago.  You gleaned information from Google glasses and talking phones.  I actually went to Patee Library.  You dictated papers to your computer.  I used a typewriter.  I shot videotape, and edited reel to reel tapes in the radio studio.  You generate holographs and manipulate digital bytes.

But you graduate a Nittany Lion, as I did.  You take your place in a proud tradition, with a worthy degree from a fine public institution, known worldwide for engineers, meterologists, writers, business leaders, and good sports programs, including football, and as a school whose student athletes mostly graduate.

Your football team was once led by the most revered person in college athletics, who knew presidents and raised billions for the school, who set an example of winning with honor, but was fired and died amid accusation and suspicion the year you were born, forever changing how many see your school.  Atrocities committed against children, how unversity leaders handled those crimes, and how the school’s trustees reacted when the news became a national disgrace, produced a rift in the Penn State family that festers still.

This is the only Penn State you’ve ever known.  You see it with the perspective of history, but without the rose colored tint of Happy Valley before 2011. 

We who care about Penn State have spent these last two decades rebuilding our image and rededicating our priorities, which I think are the same as a half century ago.  In 1981, we were proud of our football team, and proud of our theater, our Blue Band, Americ’a first African-American astronaut, our academic prowess, the community leaders our alumni were, and that we became.

Those horrible acts were the crimes of one person, and the wrong actions of a few more.  They never reflected what we were as a school.   You now know that, too.

I hope the class of 1981 showed you what it means to be a Penn Stater, as I’m confident you will show the class of 2081.  So as you cross campus for the last time as a student, give a nod to that goofy old guy in the Penn State tie.  That’s me.  I’m proud of you. 

I’m Penn State Proud. 

As I said last week, Bill O’Brien continues to make all the right moves as captain of the Penn State football ship.  He surely did last year, going 8-4 after losing his first two games, and probably exceeding the expectations of just about everybody. 

Sports, like politics and Wall Street, is often a game of expectations.  You are much better to set the bar low and clear it, than set it high and run smack into it.  Having rather easily cleared what was a fairly low standard last year– a winning season, even 6-6 probably would have been acceptable to most in Lion Country–O’Brien now faces higher hopes from the beleagured faithful in Happy Valley.

After all, O’Brien lost several high profile players from a not so great 2011 squad, kept everybody on track through the storm, and competed at a very high level.  He sent Jordan Hill, Mike Mauti and Gerald Hodges to the NFL.  He made Matt McGloin look like the best quarterback in the Big Ten on several Saturdays.  He turned a predictable, slogging offense into an up-tempo, fun to watch unit that could beat you any number of ways.

So, Bill, what do you do for an encore?

Some college football prediction outfit called Football Outsiders (I’d post a link but you have to pay) says Penn State will go 9-3 this year, and finish third in the (mercifully) final year of the Leaders Division.  This group apparently has a sophisticated computer program which takes teams strengths and weaknesses, projects them against their opponents pluses and minuses, and runs this all thorugh a simulated schedule 1,000 times to predict a season’s outcome.

Yikes.

I suspect that many fans, sans computer analysis, are expecting big things from O’Briens’ Lions in year two as well.  Forget the quarterback inexperience, the defense that must replace those three NFL draftees and three other starters, the still iffy kicker, and a pretty tough schedule.

That schedule includes eight bowl teams from last year.  The Lions open in the Meadowlands against resurgent Syracuse, face Central Florida which played in the Conference USA title game, and Kent State, which missed the MAC’s first-ever BCS appearance by losing the conference title game.  Plus Michigan and Nebraska at home, and Ohio State and Wisconsin on the road in conference.

 Bill O’Brien has given Lions’ fans hope .  With still more trials and Trustees upheaval to come, it’s tempting to look to Saturday afternoons on the field for relief.

Let’s just not get carried away.

After the NCAA hammered Penn State with sanctions last summer, top running back Silas Redd jumped ship for USC.

That left Penn State with little experience in the backfield.  The depth chart from June, 2012, read Redd, Bill Belton, Derek Day, and Zach Zwinak.  Who?

Belton, a promising sophomore, was next in line, but after starting the opener, was injured and never got going last year.

Derek Day just didn’t cut it.

But, Zack Zwinak did.  Recruited as a fullback, a position Bill O’Brien rarely uses, Zwinak’s future appeared murky with the Lions.  But, given his chance through defection, injury, and ineffectiveness, the guy who nine months ago was buried fourth on the depth chart at running back finished the season with 1,000 yards, a 4.9 average, and turning a lot of heads.

Even late in the year, Zwinak was thought of mostly as a power back who got tough yards and rarely was tackled for a loss.  Then he sprinted for that 50+ yard TD against Nebraska, and showed he had a little speed, too.

Zwinak enters spring as the #1 guy, but he must work on fumbling issues, and prove he can break it outside the tackles a little more.  Belton is supposedly in much better shape and healthy, and the possibility of a Zwinak-Belton, one-two, power-speed combo seems possible.  Potential laden redshirt freshman Akeel Lynch and true freshman Richy Anderson (son of former Lion back Richie Anderson) give this position depth unimagined a year ago.

O’Brien likes to throw it, but any offense must be balanced.  With a 1,000 yard season and confidence under his belt, and Belton to both push him and provide a change of pace, Zwinak seems to be the guy to lead the rushing attack. 

An attack that, just a year ago looked like a liability, may be a PSU strength in 2013.

As spring practice gets going, our thoughts turn to what the 2013 team will look like.  That means it’s time to consider the depth chart and likely contenders for starting spots and playing time.

We’ll start with quarterback.

Matt McGloin, after sharing duty with Rob Bolden for two years, finally got his chance last year.  And, he made the most of it under the expert tutelage of Bill O’Brien.  McGloin won the award for the oustanding player who started his career as a walk on.

McGloin’s graduation and the failure to attract juco star Jake Waters leaves the Lions with two talented, but untested, players to jockey for the right to lead the team this season.

Steven Bench has a year in O’Brien’s system under his belt, and very limited playing time backing up McGloin.  But, that experience and being around the college game to me gives him the upper hand for now.  But, it’s far from a sure thing.

Star recruit Christian Hackenberg earns chops for staying with Penn State through the scandal, player losses and sanctions handed down from the NCAA.  He is one of the top QB recruits, but we all know the difference between high school and big time Division I is huge.

Competition can be healthy if handled the right way, which O’Brien seems to understand.  Either of these guys appears to have the talent to flouish under the excellent coaching they will receive.  The running game should be solid, there are tight ends galore to catch the ball, and the wide receiving corps should be good enough.  The O line, as it seems is always the case, is a question.

Assuming that line is at least decent, whoever emerges as the top guy should be good enough to do the job needed under center.  The bigger question may be the mindset of the guy who is #2.  Bench has three years left, Hackenberg is a true freshman. 

If it looks like it’s heavy pine time for either, will he stay?

West Lafayette, Indiana in November.  It’s probably not most people’s idea of a great weekend getaway.

But Penn State’s football team can’t view it that way, tempting as it might be.  As QB Matt McGloin said earlier this week, this team has four games left, and the seniors have four games left in their Penn State careers.  So, every game really counts.

There was much hype and crowd energy for last week’s contest with Ohio State.  The game was on ESPN.  There will be little crowd frenzy for this game, certainly not for the Lions.  The team has to recover from a tough loss.  The audience on ESPNU will be a fraction of what the Mother Ship brings. 

Penn State must put all of that out of their minds, and not fall into the letdown trap.  This is made all the more difficult in that Purdue is 3-5, has lost four in a row, and hasn’t won a conference game yet.

The Boilermakers did, however, lose by just three points to Notre Dame, and take Ohio State to overtime before losing that one.

So, there is a pretty decent team hiding inside that very plain 3-5 exterior.

A team that would be very happy to pluck a win from a disinterested Penn State squad.

Penn State’s emotions have run very high in just about every game this year.  It would be very understandable if the tank were empty on a gray early November day in the middle of Indiana, against a lackluster opponent, in a game to which nobody is paying any particular attention.

These Lions must somehow remember they can still finish 9-3 and set the program on solid footing to negotiate the coming three bowl-less, scholarship-challenged years.  These seniors can leave their mark on this program for a long time to come.

They have to find it inside themselves to want to do it in creaky Ross-Ade Stadium.

Here’s hoping they can.

No question it gets harder from here for Penn State.  The first test of the second half of the schedule comes Saturday at Iowa.

While the Hawkeyes are not top 10 material, they are a decent team, and showed last week at Michigan State they could win a close one.  Coach Kirk Ferentz has always been pretty good at that against Penn State.

But, it sounds like both Coach Bill O’Brien and the Lions’ players are ready for this road test.

O’Brien talked about practicing with simulated crowd noise, and preparing his guys as best he can for the atmosphere of a conference road game between two teams that are 4-2 overall, and 2-0 in the league. 

At the same time, linebacker Glenn Carson says the new coaching staff has built a lot of trust with the players.  Carson says that kind of trust is important going into this type of game.  Players need to know coaches trust them to make plays in big spots.

O’Brien also talked about the players needing to trust each other, and communicate well in a hostile environment.  He says he will continue to use the up tempo offense which worked in the comeback win over Northwestern.  This will be the first test of that on the road, and that calls for the trust factor between coaches and players, and among players, to be high.

You never know what will happen once the ball is kicked off, but it seems like O’Brien and his staff have the team as ready as they can be for this week, and the rest of this season.