– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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NEW YORK — Unfortunately for the 2025 Penn State football team, it is how things started and not how they finished that proved to be the overriding narrative of its disappointing campaign, but its actual finish on Saturday afternoon did a lot to get the program’s new start off to the right foot.
Ethan Grunkemeyer threw two second=-alf touchdown passes for the Nittany Lions, who defeated Clemson 22-10 in the Pinstripe Bowl inside Yankee Stadium on Saturday. Bronx native Trebor Pena, who won the offensive player of the game, caught five passes for 100 yards, including a 73-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown early in the fourth quarter to break the contest open.
The Nittany Lions spending some time in New York in December wouldn’t have been all too surprising going into this season, given their No. 3 preseason national ranking and multiple players — quarterback Drew Allar, running backs Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton — with legitimate aspirations of being a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, awarded every year in Manhattan. However, a 3-0 start turned into an unfathomable fathomable six-game losing streak, including a historic defeat against UCLA, which eventually led to the firing of head coach James Franklin before October was halfway done.
Interim head coach Terry Smith, a Penn State alum and former football player, won over the team as head man almost immediately during the in-season reclamation project, and the Nittany Lions responded with three straight wins to end the season to become bowl eligible.
While a win over a fellow preseason-top-10-turned-disappointment in the Tigers is more consolation than coronation, the emotional Smith called the win this afternoon “the greatest win of my life” in his final game as head coach before former Iowa State head man Matt Campbell, hired earlier in the month, takes over.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Saturday afternoon’s game, with photos taken by ALOST photo editor Robert Cole. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page. Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 16 pictures in total.
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