> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Hope would be nice, but... - URL: https://my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io/hope-would-be-nice-but/ - Published: 2026-10-18T17:13:29.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-18T17:13:29.000Z - Author: Bill DiFilippo Time for one of the many Pep Guardiola quotes I like. Congrats to everyone who had the under on 2.5 posts until Bill shoehorned Guardiola into one of them. In Nov. 2019, Manchester City had to go play Liverpool. The rivalry between the two clubs — led at the time by Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp — defined the Premier League for a few years. A remarkable clash of styles, personalities, and clubs. Anfield was a house of horrors for Pep, as it is for basically everyone who goes there. Things were going poorly for City, which slipped from its unusually high standards over the prior few years due to injuries and general attrition. And yet… “I’m not going to take the bus to Anfield on Sunday thinking I’m going to lose the game,” [Guardiola said](https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/pep-guardiola-outlines-man-city-20847868?ref=my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io). “That has never ­happened in my career. I have always had the feeling that if we do the special things we plan to do, then we will have our chance to win.” ***“People keep talking about what will happen if we lose. But what if we win?”*** Unfortunately for my beautiful sky blue cheaters, they suffered [a 3-1 loss](https://www.fotmob.com/matches/manchester-city-vs-liverpool/2f48yd?ref=my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io#3055851:tab=lineup). This gives them something in common with the 2026 Penn State Nittany Lions, which lost on Saturday to Michigan. — To me, that quote is about hope. No fan has ever gone into a big game feeling good. Maybe they’ll convince themselves it’s their day, but it usually takes a bit of work to get there. There’s an underlying feeling of dread that we all try our best to fend off, but can’t. Sport does this to all of us. We love it, anyway. This brings us to this Penn State team’s problem: a lack of hope. I apologize for being the guy who embeds their own post, but I will bet I was not the only one who thought this when Bryce Underwood got benched for Tommy Carr on Saturday afternoon in Ann Arbor: > anyway michigan is 100% winning this game now > > — Bill DiFilippo ([@billdifilippo.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:f7i33cd3b5n6en2iunk2mwkp?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io)) [October 17, 2026 at 5:34 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:f7i33cd3b5n6en2iunk2mwkp/post/3my4273v2wk2w?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io) This isn’t because I think Carr is the second coming of Tom Brady or anything. This was because I have zero reason to believe in this Penn State team. Kyle Whittingham, who is so washed that Utah Closing Time’d him and he somehow parlayed that availability into the Michigan job, did something that Penn State fans really want Matt Campbell to do now: benched his quarterback for not being good enough. Underwood is the kind of guy that you flat-out cannot bench. The local kid, former No. 1 recruit in America. [Famous people paid lots of money to get him to Ann Arbor](https://fortune.com/2025/08/28/larry-ellison-bryce-underwood-michigan-recruiting-jolin-tom-brady-dave-portnoy/?ref=my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io) and made a very big deal out of it when he flipped from LSU. But unlike Rocco Becht, [whose iron grip on the starting gig only grows stronger](https://x.com/aberegg%5Fnoah/status/2111599716488167488?ref=my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io), he got benched. His last name surely helped, but Michigan Stadium roared when it saw Tom and Lloyd’s grandkid lead the offense out on the field after halftime. (Quick aside: Click on that last hyperlink, where Campbell says Rocco will "continue to grow and be better." Rocco is college football's version of a 1974 Ford Pinto with 350,000 miles on it, man, what are you talking about?) It was different. And in sports, different brings hope. Getting a new coach usually fires up a fanbase. Every time a recruit or transfer decides they’re coming to your school, the possibilities are endless, because they haven't dropped a pass or missed a tackle yet. Free agent signings. Trades. New starters. All that stuff. On Saturday, Penn State lost. The way they got to that point was different than it’s been the last few weeks — Chase Sowell, hold your head up high, young man — but the result is the same as it’s been from the moment Big Ten play kicked off. Hell, through seven games, the result is the same as it was last year, which was viewed as such a disaster that we had to throw out the baby with the bathwater and start anew. — Penn State did not lose on Saturday for only one reason. It wasn’t just Rocco (who was not very good and should be benched depending on how much [getting your heart operated on in the offseason affects a young QB's development](https://www.centredaily.com/sports/college/penn-state-university/psu-football/article316902249.html?ref=my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io)), or just the running game (which is impressively awful), or just Carr breathing life into Michigan, or just the run defense not holding up in the second half, or just a quick whistle that took what should've been a safety off the board. To quote the last guy, it’s all of it. They’ve lost in four different ways the last four weeks. A breathtaking meltdown against a Wisconsin team that actively tried giving Penn State the game. Chip Kelly giving them the business in Evanston by running a real football-ass offense. USC, they got Blue Chip Ratio’d to death. Both teams entered Saturday’s game with moribund running games. One team breathed a little life into theirs. That team won. So now, we’re here. A scintillating 3-4 (0-4) against a schedule that is somehow less scary than it was at the beginning of the season, when people looked at the schedule and went “oh wow Penn State could make the Playoff because of this schedule.” You cannot script a funnier way to get to 3-4 (0-4), and last year’s way of getting to 3-4 (0-4) was, when you take a step back, pretty funny in a gallows humor sort of way. I said it a little while ago, but every issue with Matt Campbell's program comes back to one big thing: A lack of hope. We have zero proof of concept here. There is no reason to believe in Matt Campbell’s Penn State Nittany Lion football program competing to the standard that he got hired to reach. (Did he get hired because other people said no, were not taken as seriously as they could’ve been by Pat Kraft, or in one specific case, got pantsed by P.J. Fleck after the job opened up? Well, who’s to say?) (Me, I am to say: That is what happened.) Campbell was a godsend at the time he was hired. Compared to Brian Daboll or Tommy Rees or Matt Patricia, we won the lottery. A coach whose entire thing is doing more with less, a critical attribute at a school like Penn State where our rich people don’t like to cut checks to miraculous football playing teenagers. Someone who preaches toughness and hard work and all the other buzzwords that fire up our fanbase of people who thought society peaked in 1994\. (Oasis released *Definitely Maybe* in 1994, so there's something to that!) And yet, with each passing week, it becomes easier to remember this was not going to be his in the first place. I give Campbell a lot of credit for recognizing that Penn State lost its way a bit — one story I’ve heard about how James-centric the program was, well, maybe I’ll be able to tell it some day, but trust me, “We Are” wasn’t the sentiment. The sentiment was “James Is.” Something I think a totally process-oriented guy like Campbell can struggle with is that you gotta have results to make people believe your process is good. Building and working and establishing a culture is great right up until the games start, at which point you have to win. This quote after the game, via my pal Daniel Gallen of Lions247, was pretty interesting: > asked Penn State coach Matt Campbell about seeing growth & development in his team but not having wins at the end of the day [pic.twitter.com/YiwAIUMylU](https://t.co/YiwAIUMylU?ref=my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io) > > — Daniel Gallen (@danieljtgallen) [October 18, 2026](https://x.com/danieljtgallen/status/2111618548334534753?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=my-stupid-alma-mater-is-driving-me-nuts.ghost.io) This doesn’t sound like a guy who knows that his fan base was sold on this season being different. As the story went, Campbell got to port over the very best of Iowa State’s roster. That got mixed with a bunch of impact players from the last few years of Penn State, whatever portal finds they could unearth, and a few recruits (Kraft neglected the class Franklin put together, which sucks, but the Dog In Him levels Josiah Zayas shows are off the charts, at least). This roster, combined with a great schedule and Campbell's ability to coach 'em up, meant Penn State would win this year and set the foundation upon which future Penn State teams could be built. Maybe that meant a Playoff berth, maybe that meant just missing out. Maybe that meant, for the first time since one notable windy and rainy night in 2016, Penn State would win a big game it should not. Imagine what a joy it would be to look at the point spread before a game and then be pleasantly surprised when the clock hits zero a few hours later. Seems nice! College football is the most results-based business in the world. At some point, you have to win football games against teams that have a pulse. And Campbell’s pivot to talking about how close they are in losses and how hard they are working to build the foundation of a football program is starting to concern me, because through four conference games, the foundation looks like it’s made of the paper mâché. I’m not reactive enough to say the entire Campbell era has no hope because of four Big Ten games. But man, Penn State got told the last era wasn’t good enough, and this era's start has been considerably more dire. Maybe they’ll get through the bye, rally, and win five straight games to end the year, plus whatever bowl game pulls Penn State fans away from their families during the holidays. That won’t be proof of concept, but it’d at least give us *something*. If you’re led to believe you’re getting a steak, then you get two sliders from White Castle, you’d be pretty bummed. But if you’re starving, you’re just glad you got some food. In that moment, two sliders from White Castle are delicious. Penn State fans are starving right now. My fear is we're not going to get the football version of two sliders from White Castle, which as this point is bowl eligibility. Instead, we'll get fed more quotes about culture, toughness, and building something from a guy whose signature win in blue and white is against a team that let Charlotte win a football game for the first time since Sept. 2025 on Saturday. *“People keep talking about what will happen if we lose. But what if we win?”* The question isn’t “But what if we win?” For Matt Campbell, the question is becoming far more dire: can you?