The 2012 Penn State football was one of the strangest in program, for reasons that are understandable to anyone that paid the slightest bit of attention to college football at the time.
It was the year after “it” happened and Bill O’Brien was in his first year with the program, having lost some key cogs to transfer in the wake the scandal and NCAA sanctions.
Early in the season, it appeared the experts and critics would be right that Penn State was doomed to become an FCS program for the foreseeable future. The Nittany Lions looked horrendous in an opening-game home loss to Ohio (!