What Could Have Been for the Penn State Football Program

As Penn State limps, no, as they crawl to the Bye Week with a 3-4 record and winless in the Big Ten, there are a lot of questions that are being asked of the program and the head coach, Matt Campbell.

When Campbell was hired, it was believed to be a home run hire by just about everyone in the college football world, including me. I thought that the Nittany Lions got the guy they wanted, but as it turns out, maybe there was a reason that they were still there after the entire hiring cycle circled through.

Nonetheless, two months into the 2026-27 season, the outlook for this program again seems bleak, and one wonders what it could have been.

Never more does that materialize than when you look west to Provo, Utah, and see what the No. 2 BYU Cougars are doing.

The Cougars just had one of their biggest wins in program history over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, which propelled them to their highest ranking since they were No. 1 in the country in 1984.

The Cougar head coach, Kalane Sitake, is the difference-maker in this conversation. Reports say that in this hiring cycle, he turned down $10 million to become the Nittany Lions head coach and stayed with BYU.

Now, there are certainly limitations, and BYU has experienced some of its own question marks with its funding over the past couple of months, but man, what could have been.

Also, this isn't even an indictment of Penn State and their push to hire Sitake. If that offer is true and they put $10 million on the table for him and he still turned it down, then it is a true hat tip from Penn State to BYU.

Regardless of how it shook out and all of the details involved in it, it is truly impossible not to dream of a 7-0 Nittany Lions football team that is the No. 2 or 3 team in the country staring at a manageable Big Ten schedule the rest of the way.

Those are just fantasies at this point. The reality is that the Nittany Lions have to get this thing turned around, and it has to happen quickly; there is no other way around it. The stretch coming up for the Nittany Lions features Purdue, Washington, Minnesota, Rutgers, and Maryland to end the season. 

Anything less than 4-1 to finish the season is an immediate disappointment for the entire season. On top of watching BYU make a push to be the No. 1 team in the country is just adding salt to the wound.