Penn State Football: Why Team Should Feel Nothing but Pride Despite Loss

As great as it would have been for the Penn State football team to complete their fourth-quarter rally and defeat Nebraska in the shadows of all the allegations engulfing the school, the scoreboard hardly mattered.

Saturday afternoon was about moving forward and the first step in a new direction for both Penn State football and the university as a whole. The chants for Joe Paterno were heard in the crowd, but this football team gave its student body and all university members the chance to just enjoy the game that has brought their school such pride and publicity in recent decades.

Nebraska handled the situation with the utmost class—from the prayers before and after the game in the middle of the field with Penn State players, to the kind words exchanged between head coaches after.

The Nittany Lions players struggled out of the gate in the first few quarters, and understandably so, but once the second half started, this team played with a focused passion that you could just see while watching the offense march down field and defense making key stops against the Cornhuskers attack.

As objective as the ESPN commentators could be, you could tell that they personally were rooting for a Penn State victory to give this school something to cheer and be happy about—if not for just the afternoon.

Even without the win to cheer about, Penn State University should be nothing but proud of their student-athletes who went out there amidst the hardest week in school history and played their hearts out.

Players like running back Stephfon Green stepped up big in a game many wondered if PSU could handle mentally, given the fallout of the sexual abuse allegations involving former assistant Jerry Sandusky and the firing of their head coach of 60 years in Joe Paterno.

As a sports fan, journalist and college student myself, I hope that during those few hours of football, Penn State could focus on something other than the scandal and just enjoy the game of football.

It was a valiant display by those players Saturday afternoon and the university should be nothing but proud of them.