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Column: Evolving attitudes foundational toward future Penn State success

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A 'Cotton Bowl Champions' hat snugly atop his head, Michal Menet sat at his Cowboys Stadium locker conflicted.

His Nittany Lions had just topped Memphis, 53-39, to win a second New Year’s Six bowl in three years while improving to 11-2 on the 2019 season. And at the forefront of that win, Menet’s offensive line paved the way to a season-high 396 yards of rushing for Penn State’s offense.

Still, he said, there were lulls in the offense which needed to be a priority fix for Penn State this offseason.

Displeased after a 53-point, winning performance?

“One hundred percent; you can never be satisfied,” Menet said. “Good teams don't ever get satisfied and I think we're a really good team. And I think that's part of our success that, no matter if we win by 50 or win by two, we're always going to find ways that we need to improve.”

James Franklin and the Nittany Lions are determined to reach even greater levels of success moving forward.
James Franklin and the Nittany Lions are determined to reach even greater levels of success moving forward.
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Surely, it’s a task that has become increasingly difficult as the Nittany Lions’ results have accumulated the past four seasons.

With the win on Saturday, Penn State improved to 42-11 since the start of the 2016 season. Its 79.2 percent winning rate is good for fifth among Power Five programs in the same span, trailing only Clemson (55-3; 94.8 percent), Alabama (51-5; 91.1), Ohio State (49-6; 89.1), and Oklahoma (47-8; 85.5) in the same span.

The Nittany Lions’ margin of victory since 2016, at +17.3 points per game, is fourth only behind Alabama (+26.9), Clemson (+26.4), and Ohio State (+24.0). Three times in the past four seasons, Penn State has gone unbeaten at Beaver Stadium, producing a home record of 26-2 during that time.

And, maybe most indicatively of Penn State’s ascent into the upper echelon of college football’s powers, the Nittany Lions are now 39-4 as a favorite the past four seasons. The key, of course, is that Penn State has only played 53 games in that span, making the Nittany Lions the favored team in 81.1 percent of their games.

This season alone, the Nittany Lions were the betting favorite in 12 of their 13 games, an underdog only once, on the road, to eventual Big Ten Champion and College Football Playoff participant Ohio State.

This, of course, during a season branded as a rebuild before it ever started, which All-American linebacker Micah Parsons made sure to remind everyone of on Monday.

Bucking that narrative this year, the Nittany Lions needed practically no time at all to start looking ahead.

“I think it's really good for us to kind of catapult us into the offseason,” Menet said. “Coming off a win, I think it'll make us even more hungry because we know we had two losses this year, two big losses. So I think to have that win kind of motivates you a little bit more to look back and see where the breakdowns were.

“I think it's really good for us and I'm just happy to get a win. A champions ring looks a helluva lot better than not.”

With the Cotton Bowl win working as another affirmation to that trajectory, the reality for the program now is the Nittany Lions will spend the next eight months doggedly pursuing even greater heights.

And in the immediate aftermath of the game Saturday and in the time since, as a program, Penn State has not been particularly subtle about announcing those aspirations. Even head coach James Franklin, indirectly, got into the act in his postgame remarks. Praising the program for its success this season, and the environment that has been created to ensure that pursuit of success can continue to thrive, Franklin also couldn’t help but turn an eye toward the immediate future.

“Obviously, whenever you can meet and exceed expectations, that's always a good thing, especially at a place like Penn State where the expectations and standards are so high,” Franklin said. “So, yeah, I think as young as we are, what people were expecting for this year, we've got a lot of work to do in a lot of different areas. But I think most people would agree that the program is headed in the right direction. We're developing well. We're game-planning well. We're recruiting well. And really at this point of where we are as a program, you've got to do it all at a very, very high level.

“I’m going to enjoy this win tonight, but I do think this game, and this win, and these 11 wins, and these young players that are going to be returning, is going to give us a lot of momentum going into next season, which we're going to need… which we're going to need.”

Working tirelessly, on a years-long path, to establish a culture in which anything less than the best isn’t good enough, the comments and attitudes from within Penn State’s locker room following the Cotton Bowl are the manifestation of that reality.

Setting up tantalizing possibilities for a fan base thirsting for inclusion in the next and final step of college football’s increasingly exclusive club of elites, the Nittany Lions aren’t simply hoping for future success. Rather, they’re now certain, with their continued mindset of determination, of its inevitability.

“Everybody said we were going to have a down year this year,” Menet said. “If you all want to call it a down year, you can, that's how high our standards are around here. The standard keeps rising every single year, every single game, every single practice.

“That's just the type of program that we have and that's the type of culture Coach Franklin has created around here, and I think it's really great. Guys are just constantly wanting to get better because they know whatever they did the last day, the last week, is not acceptable anymore. You always have to be improving in the right direction.”

Prior successes acting to reduce the margin of error even further, the Nittany Lions are poised and determined to do exactly that.

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