Penn State cannot afford its fans losing faith in football
What is the biggest challenge facing the program now?
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This is a very dangerous time for the Penn State football program, and for Penn State Athletics as a whole.
To have the football team struggling on the field the way it is, and for new coach Matt Campbell to already be facing heavy criticism, we need to consider the potential ramifications of this quick collapse on the school's football brand.
Let's begin where we always must begin, by following the money.
Penn State needs every penny it can get. From you, the fans.
Penn State needs all of you to feel good about the way things are going, so you'll remain engaged and inspired --- to spend more money.
Penn State needs butts in the seats at Beaver Stadium. Every seat.
The Stadium is undergoing a $700 million renovation. Penn State football, at $31 million this season, is already roughly $18 million behind Ohio State and some others in NIL spending.
That puts PSU directly behind the 8 ball financially, compared to the top money programs in the sport, during this insane era of football spending.
Of Penn State's 31 varsity sports, only football, men's basketball and wrestling turn a profit. The hockey programs don't lose money because they have an endowment, but the other 26 varsity programs all lose money.
It is absolutely vital that Penn State fans fully support the football team, support the coach and support the direction of the program. Because football pays for just about everything else, and a hit to the football brand jeopardizes a whole bunch of things, including the Lions' ability to be a legitimate national power on the field.
Many PSU fans couldn't wait for James Franklin to leave. They had gotten fed up with Big Game James and simply were not going to keep forking over money at every turn. That includes some of the school's biggest donors.
The hope in starting over, in hiring Campbell and the school getting back to embracing its past more than Franklin ever did, was to help get more money flowing into the program and athletic department.
Again, if you think PSU was on equal footing financially with many other top programs, you're flat out wrong. It wasn't that way even before the scandal, it certainly wasn't that way in the years after the scandal, and there was still a lot of catching up to do in recent years.
Just two Big Ten games into Campbell's tenure, it's already become crystal clear that there are some major red flags. The team on the field just doesn't look that good, Campbell looks like he's in over his head, many fans want AD Pat Kraft fired, and worst of all, we're even seeing lots of empty seats at Beaver Stadium.
A guy named Bob called my radio show after the Buffalo game to ask about all the empty seats. I brushed it off, thinking it was just Buffalo. But then there were a bunch of empty seats for the night game against Wisconsin, too. Nobody should brush that off.
The White Out against USC this Saturday night will be a major litmus test for the fan base. Tickets on the secondary markets have plunged by more than 60 percent. If we see thousands of empty seats for a White Out, then whoa, look out.
The Lions can turn a lot of this around by winning this week. Winning is always the best cure.
But if they lose to this solid USC team, lots of people are going to punt on the season. And some are going to give up on Campbell very, very early on in his tenure.
Penn State cannot afford for that to happen. Literally, from a football standpoint, and figuratively, from a financial standpoint.
Cory Giger hosts the Blue & White Wrapup postgame show following each PSU game on JACK-FM 107.1.