Penn State Elects to End Season: Opts Out of Bowl Game Considerations

The 2020 Penn State Football season has officially come to an end. Following the Nittany Lions 56-21 victory over Illinois on Saturday night, the program made the decision to opt-out of bowl game considerations. The program announced the decision on social media Saturday night. The Nittany Lions will finish the season with a 4-5 record after starting 0-5 on the season.

The discussion and eventual decision were led by the Nittany Lions captains and leadership council who discussed the opportunity to play in a bowl game with their teammates following the win over Illinois. Ultimately, the players chose to end the season and go home and spend time with their loved ones for the holidays.

Part of head coach James Franklin’s quote in the announcement reads the following;

“As you know, we rely on our captains and Leadership Council to provide a voice for our team, and our student-athletes made the difficult choice not to participate in a bowl this year in order to spend time with loved ones. We are fully supportive of their decision, knowing it has been many months since our students-athletes have been able to spend time with their families and the challenges they endured, both physically and mentally. This will be an opportunity for our guys to go home, see family and recharge for the spring semester.”

The Nittany Lions will return in January and begin preparing for the 2021 season though will have to battle through many of the same COVID-19 challenges that they faced during the 2020 season. That being said, they did so very successfully this season and were one of just two Big Ten programs to play all nine games in 2020, joining Rutgers who finished their own season on Friday night.

For the rest of us, it will be a waiting game until the next time we all get to gather around and watch Penn State football next fall. Hopefully, there will be some fans in the stands come that time but until then, all we can do is begin the countdown.....

Only 258 days until Penn State Football!