Penn State Football: Closer to 7-5 or College Football Playoff?

Road To Mediocrity #4

Lose inexplicable games each year

This last key to turning your good program into a mediocre one is really a culmination of the first three.

If your program consistently misses on the rare 5* recruits they bring in, the opponents in your conference improve, and you don’t sufficiently develop your QBs, you’re going to lose a game or two each season which can’t be explained.

And this, my friends, is any easy way to turn an excellent 10-2 season into a disappointing 8-4 season. But it happens to a lot of programs.

For a program like Penn State Football, most weeks they can take the field against their opponent and simply out-athlete the other team without much effort. Excluding a bowl game opponent, they will probably only take the field against two or maybe three teams which have the same or better talent as them.

This means anything less than a win in those 9-10 games against lesser talent is unacceptable.

Does this sometimes happen to the elite programs? Sure. Clemson, Alabama, and Oklahoma lose inexplicable games from time to time. It just happens in the crazy world of college football.

But here’s the difference. They don’t let it happen every single year.

I’ll again revert this back to Penn State. Do they seem to lose an explicable game every season? If so, do you think this trend will continue?

If the answer to both of those questions is “yes”, then the road to mediocrity isn’t far away.