Writer’s note*: **

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Michigan should at least have the decency to put up a marker or something. Nothing fancy, mind you. Something small but tasteful off in some out-of-the-way nook or cranny of the Wolverines’ cavernous stadium.

This is where the Penn State 2022 football season lost its life. The Lions were a seemingly decent lot, standup opponents through 5 games as summer turned to autumn across Big Ten country. No one knows exactly what afflicted the traveling party on Oct. 15, 2022. The group arrived in Ann Arbor seemingly healthy and in good spirits. The Wolverines, had they known how weak and frail were the Lions, might have tried harder to resuscitate them. But no one could have known. May their season rest in peace. 

The Michigan players, after realizing what had happened, were truly regretful.

“We were just … playing,” one Michigan offensive lineman protested. “We thought they had been coached and knew the ropes. That’s just basic offensive line play.

“I’ll admit, we were a little confused when they just moved out of the way. But we didn’t know they were helpless. We thought someone had prepared them. This is awful. We were just trying to win a football game, I swear.”

Some Wolverines players went so far as to suggest that Penn State was not actually dead.

“They’re fine,” another of Jim Harbaugh’s henchmen said. “They’re 5-1. Still in the top 25.”

Outsiders speculated that Penn State circa 2022 was experiencing yet another bout of narcolepsy.

But the dead season just lay there. If this was sleep, it was very deep sleep indeed.

“I don’t know nothing about narcolepsy,” punter Brad Robbins said, “but something was surely wrong with them. We take no blame. They were like that when they arrived.” Robbins spoke out to break his boredom, since he didn’t get to participate in Michigan’s murderous 41-17 victory. “Manny Diaz’s defense can’t force even 1 punt? Maybe that team is dead.”

Still other Michigan Men claimed innocence, insisting that the Penn State season had died a week earlier during the team’s bye week, even though no one had noticed. Bye had always been tough on the Lions, at least since James Franklin had arrived in 2014 to lead the program. Maybe this latest bye was just too much. Idle time and all.

“We tried to save them,” Michigan quarterback JJ McCarthy said. “I threw a pick-6. We allowed a long run to set up a touchdown. Shoot, we gave them the lead in the third quarter. It’s not our fault! They wouldn’t tackle Blake [Corum]. They wouldn’t tackle Donovan [Edwards]. … They just wouldn’t tackle. What were we supposed to do?”

They just wanted to win a football game. That’s what the Wolverines kept saying.

“No one hates Penn State,” a UM linebacker said of his team’s weak and unstable league mates. “We reserve those feelings for Ohio State.”

But the visitors’ season lay there.

A young co-ed in the sea of Maize in the stands admitted that her joy about her own team turned to concern for the other.

“They did seem lifeless. I was worried about them,” she confessed. “We do tend to do this to opponents, but I didn’t know it could get this bad. By the end, I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep watching. It was gruesome.”

Mourners in State College selfishly hoped for a dead-cat bounce for the White Out game against Minnesota. Maybe the burial could wait until the Halloween weekend, when No. 2 Ohio State would be coming to town. Stripes aren’t classic funeral couture, but they beat all-white garb. And 107,000+ were likely to show up that weekend to bid farewell to Penn State football 2022.

But the truth was setting in before anyone had even left The Mitten State. A doctor in The Big House confirmed it.

A shaken Franklin felt compelled to say something after the 0:00 on the scoreboard showed that time had indeed run out.

“Obviously, this is uncomfortable for all of us,” he said. “I get it, people want answers. But I’ve gotta watch the tape. One thing I will say: We all signed up for this. Seasons sometimes go this way.”

He pointed out that games would continue, even with the season lost. The ritual will continue. There will be cathartic gatherings the next 2 Saturdays in State College. The campus and the town will come together, like they always do.

And yes, there will be seasons to come. There have been football seasons in Happy Valley for more than 130 years, and Big Ten ones for 30.

2023 will arrive before you know it. 2024 is pregnant with possibilities, but let’s not be too graphic in our language. The weeks ahead will be somber.

Folks from Michigan’s gameday operations department asked if the visitors wanted a moment of silence. Or a song to be played. The alma mater? Eventually, a group decision settled on “No Time (Left for You)” by The Guess Who. Some found it oddly appropriate; others thought it was a mean-spirited jab perpetrated by someone in UM’s media relations department.

Either way, that was the end of it.


* No one edits anymore.

** A sentence would have appeared here telling you that this is an attempt at humor, and that some — okay, almost all — of the quotes are made up. But I trusted you to suspend disbelief without being tipped off.