ALTOONA, Pa. -- Penn State can still finish the regular season 10-2, which would put the Nittany Lions in position to potentially earn a New Year's Six bowl bid.
At this stage, most bowl prognosticators have Penn State going to either the Orange Bowl in Miami on Dec. 30, which is a New Year's Six game, or to the Citrus Bowl in Orlando on Jan. 2.
The Orange Bowl has always been a prestigious destination, and would be again this season as a New Year's Six game. The Lions haven't been to the Orange Bowl since the end of the 2005 season, beating Florida State in triple overtime to finish the season ranked No. 3 in the country.
One would have to think the Orange Bowl would love to have Penn State, given the fan base's great history of traveling well. If the Lions are selected for that game, you know a huge number of fans would head to Miami to watch. Wake Forest is a popular pick for that game as Penn State's potential opponent.
The Citrus Bowl is always a very nice game because it's in Orlando. The Lions last visited there to end the 2018 season and lost to Kentucky. If they go back this season, LSU seems to be the most likely opponent. Those two teams met in the Citrus Bowl -- then called the Capital One Bowl -- to end the 2009 season, with Penn State prevailing.
If the Lions finish 10-2, the Orange Bowl would seem to be the likely destination. If they're 9-3, it would be the Citrus Bowl.
So, now the question becomes: How much does a bowl destination matter nowadays?
I got into this some in Sunday's column about the quarterback situation between Sean Cliford and Drew Allar. In that piece, I argued that it doesn't matter much if the Lions finish 10-2 with Clifford because it's time to turn the page and play Allar. And if they were to go 9-3 or even 8-4 with Allar, it would still be more beneficial to the future because he would be getting lots of valuable experience.
While many readers agreed with all that, I did get some blowback with regards to the notion that finishing 10-2 and going to the Orange Bowl wouldn't matter.
Of course it would matter. For this season. For these current players. For all of them and the coaches to finish strong and get rewarded for their hard work.
See, when you're trying to make a point about one thing, sometimes you do so seemingly at the expense of something else that's important. When in reality, both things can be true at the same time and are not mutually exclusive.
I tried to make the point that playing Allar as much as possible is more important for the future of the program than continuing to play Clifford and going 10-2. And I stand by that. Still, going 10-2 and getting to the Orange Bowl with Clifford would, in fact, benefit the program in some ways, and I absolutely get that part of it, as well.
OK, so let's get to the bowl ramifications of all this. And how the way we view bowl games has changed dramatically.
Getting to the Orange Bowl would be nice, but can you honestly say it would have anywhere near the luster of, oh, even 5-6 years ago?
Consider this: Cornerback Joey Porter Jr. probably won't play in the game. He'll opt out, which he absolutely should do as a projected first-round pick. Left tackle Olu Fashanu, who has rapidly moved up draft boards and also could go in the first round, would likely opt out if he is going to decide to turn pro.
Who else might opt out? Maybe receivers Parker Washington and Mitchell Tinsley, or safety Ji'Ayir Brown? Sure, you can make a case that all should play to enhance their stock, but then you have to realize one really big thing that has become more and more clear in recent years:
Bowl just games don't matter as much to players, at least nowhere near as much as they used to.
Star players don't want to take the risk of getting injured, and even middle-round draft guys have started to deem bowl games too risky. All of this has escalated quickly with more and more players opting out the past few years, which is something you pretty much never saw until 2016, when Stanford's Christian McCaffrey and LSU's Leonard Fournette kind of started the trend by skipping their bowl games.
Last year, Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett and Michigan State running back Kenneth Walker III opted out of a New Year's Six game, the Peach Bowl. And nobody really even cared. Or questioned it. Because this has become the new norm.
Now, here's where the discussion gets interesting.
How much longer will we consider what bowl game a team goes to overly important, when the games themselves continue to become less and less important in many aspects?
Several readers responded to my Sunday column that going 10-2 and getting to the Orange Bowl would help Penn State's recruiting. I cannot say definitively that it would or would not, because it hasn't happened yet. But I can say that recent history proves it hasn't really mattered much how well the Lions did on the field.
Looking at the recruiting numbers:
• Penn State went 11-2 in 2019 and won the Cotton Bowl, a New Year’s Six game. Its recruiting class for the next year ranked 15th in the nation.
• Penn State went 4-5 in 2020. Its recruiting class for the next year ranked 21st in the nation.
• Penn State went 7-6 in 2021. Its recruiting class for the next year ranked 6th in the nation.
• Penn State is 6-2 right now. Its recruiting class for next year ranks 14th in the nation. And it's probably not going to get much higher, if at all, even if the Lions do go 10-2 and get to the Orange Bowl.
Fans may want to argue that a team's success on the field leads directly to recruiting success, because that would seem like common sense. But in reality, the correlation doesn't always exist. How can a 7-6 season for the Lions produce a No. 6 recruiting class, when two years earlier an 11-2 season produced a No. 15 class?
Because recruiting is not and has never been an exact science. High school kids often make decisions for all kinds of reasons that have very little to do with whether the current team is very good.
What can we say definitively about bowl games and how much they help a program? Well, in 2022, not much. Sure, if you're Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Clemson and you're going to the College Football Playoff all the time, then yeah, that will help your recruiting.
But if you're Penn State, and you can pull in a No. 6 recruiting class coming off a 7-6 season during which the head coach was rumored to be leaving, what does that tell you about recruiting?
It tells me that going to the Orange Bowl this year might sound prestigious and all, but it still may not give the program much of a tangible boost in recruiting.
