It was easy to sense the functional end of Penn State’s sanction epoch when Sam Ficken kicked a Pinstripe Bowl-winning extra point through Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park last December.
The electricity in the building that night rivaled that of any great win in Nittany Lions history, not because the game was particularly important in the broader college football landscape, but because the victory cemented the program’s legacy of having taken the NCAA’s best shot and come out the other side a winner.
The decision announced Thursday to take players’ last names off of their jerseys, then, was the symbolic capstone and emphatic statement that Penn State is, in fact, back, if not yet as a program among the nation’s elite, then one that aspires to be there rather than simply survive.