It’s tough being a college football fan in Philadelphia. You tingle with excitement at this time every year, only to quickly remember that very few people in this city give a shit about the sport. We’ve got to be one of the worst college football towns in the United States.

But Crossing Broad does have Penn State readers, so let’s talk about the season opener on Saturday night. PSU vs. West Virginia. As much as it pains me to write this, you guys are going to absolutely throttle us. We’re coming off back-to-back losing seasons and were picked to finish last in the Big 12. We are down bad.

As of Friday morning, the line is sitting at 20.5. That’s a lot of points for a power five game, but Penn State is #7 in the country, playing at home in primetime, and coming off an 11-win season and Rose Bowl victory. Yes, it’s true that Sean Clifford, Joey Porter Jr., Ji’Ayir Brown, and PJ Mustipher (among others) are gone, but the PSU defense is nasty and Nicholas Singleton is still in the fold, lining up behind 19-year-old Drew Allar, a four-star recruit who had offers from Michigan, Texas A&M, Iowa, Kentucky, Pitt, and Washington. That’s the one area where upset-minded WV fans are focused, on Penn State’s QB. He’s got reasonable game experience but this will be his first year as the de facto starter.

That said, it’s not like we’re returning Joe Montana at QB. We’re rolling with Garrett Greene, who, like Allar, is also a first-year starter. He’s a quality dual-threat type of guy, good on the feet with some open field scrambling and playmaking ability, but he’s not going to come out and throw with any consistency against a PSU defense that most experts have in the top-five or top-eight this season. In 22 games, Greene has thrown 5 touchdowns and 3 interceptions, so no, he’s not gonna do much damage to Penn State in the air.

The one area where WV does excel is on the ground, so here’s exactly how the game is going to play out:

  • WVU game plan: shorten the game and chew clock.
  • Neal Brown will try to run the ball with C.J. Donaldson behind a quality offensive line. Donaldson missed time via injury last year, but finished with 87 carries for 526 yards and eight touchdowns.
  • If Penn State’s interior run defense doesn’t hold up, Manny Diaz will stuff the box and force Greene to throw.
  • WVU will play some bullshit drop-8 Big 12 zone coverage and try to confuse Allar by showing various defensive looks. Allar will start slow, but start to figure it out in the 2nd quarter and Penn State goes into halftime with a 17-7 lead.
  • A one-dimensional WVU won’t be able to throw their way back into the game against Penn State’s DBs, and the pass rushers get to Greene.
  • Penn State rides superior talent to a 34-14 win. They just barely do not cover.

The betting line for this game is gross. Again, 20.5 spread, O/U 49.5. PSU -1500 on the moneyline and WVU a +800 dog. I do not see a lot of value there, but it does feel like an under type of game with Allar getting started, and especially if WV has any kind of success running the ball and chewing clock in the early going. If you want to move the spread to 21 and try to get a three-touchdown push at -125 or something similar, that might be worth a play. It just feels like this one finishes in the 44-48 point range. It’s not that Penn State won’t score enough, it’s that WV won’t score enough. I just don’t see the Mountaineers putting up more than 14-17 in Happy Valley, where Ohio State was the only team to accomplish that last year.

Right, so officially I’ve got PSU winning 34-14, but WVU just barely covers and the under hits.

It does kind of disappoint me personally, because I would have loved to see Penn State back on the schedule when we were not complete dog shit. Unfortunately we’re coming into this one with a lame duck coaching staff and underwhelming squad. Penn State and WV played each other every year for a long time (in what was not a competitive series), but we never got to see Pat White and Steve Slaton vs. Tony Hunt and Deon Butler. We never got to see Geno Smith and Tavon Austin against Matt McGloin and Allen Robinson. We never got to see Will Grier against Miles Sanders and Trace McSorley.

Penn State is finally back on the schedule, and you guys are good while we’re crap.

Final thought –

Conference realignment screwed everything up, but in a perfect world, Penn State, Pitt, WV, Syracuse, and all of the eastern football schools would take turns playing each other every year. I know some are too young to remember when these teams played each other all the time, but it felt like those games meant more because of the geography. I know a lot of PSU fans think they’re too big for some of the small beans eastern schools, which may be true, but I’d rather see Penn State play Pitt in the non-conference every year vs. whatever dumbass conference game is scheduled against Northwestern, or Minnesota, or Nebraska.

Anyway, good luck Saturday night. Rah rah.