Patience is a virtue.
In modern college football, it is also an invoice.
Penn State fans are being asked to spend more, donate more and invest more emotionally and financially in a sport that promises increasingly expensive premium experiences.
Boosters are not buying patience.
Season-ticket holders are not paying for abstract progress.
They all expect winning to be their return on investment.
That is why nobody should dismiss the anger after Penn State’s 31-23 White Out loss to USC.
A record crowd of 114,419 filled Beaver Stadium, Penn State led in the second half and still finished the night with their third consecutive loss of the 2026 season and their ninth loss in their last 12 Big Ten conference games.
That disappointment is real, earned and understandable. Penn State again failed to produce the result its supporters deserved.
But patience is not the same thing as blind faith, and accountability does not require an immediate verdict.
Both can exist at once.
I originally wanted Bob Chesney to be Penn State’s next head coach. I made no secret of it. He is a Pennsylvania native from Kulpmont who played at Dickinson and won everywhere he went.
Chesney went 23-9 at Division III Salve Regina, reviving a program that had endured eight consecutive losing seasons. He went 44-16 at Division II Assumption, taking the Greyhounds to three straight NCAA playoff appearances. At Holy Cross, he went 44-21 and won five consecutive Patriot League championships. He then went 21-6 in two seasons at James Madison, winning a Sun Belt championship and reaching the College Football Playoff in 2025. His resume was not based on projection. It was built on repeated proof at every level.
Now Chesney is 5-0 at UCLA after a 17-15 win at Oregon, becoming the first Bruins coach to win his first five games. Meanwhile, Penn State is 3-3.
Of course that creates buyer’s remorse. Pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
I spoke with a colleague in the press box who summarized my feelings as well as anyone could: I wanted Chesney, but I did not mind Campbell.
That remains where I stand.
Chesney’s start is evidence that he may have been an excellent choice. However, it is not proof that Matt Campbell was the wrong one.
Five games at UCLA do not guarantee Chesney’s long-term success any more than six games at Penn State guarantee Campbell’s failure.
Early returns matter, but they are not final returns.
Good things take time. Rome was not built in a day. Slow and steady can still win the race. Those sayings endure because patience protects us from turning a difficult moment into a permanent conclusion.
Penn State’s roster situation demands that perspective.
The roster that Campbell inherited offered a stark picture of what was being inherited.
The Nittany Lions had 48 players in the portal compared with only 30 who had announced their return. Penn State added 39 transfers, and 23 of them came from Iowa State.
They have inevitably been labeled the “Nittany Cyclones,” usually with more contempt than affection.
Perhaps it is time to reconsider that reflex.
Those players did not create Penn State’s roster crisis. They answered it. They did not come to Happy Valley to weaken the standard. They came because Campbell needed enough experienced players who understood his expectations to keep Penn State from falling through the floor.
Look at the White Out itself. Becht threw for 289 yards. Sowell had 95 receiving yards. Hansen led the team in rushing, even though the running game as a whole remained ineffective. Eskildsen’s late fumble ended Penn State’s final opportunity, and he will live with that mistake, but the roster emergency that brought him here was not his creation.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.The fumble belonged to Eskildsen. The rebuild does not.
It is easy to turn every Iowa State transfer into a symbol of what Penn State currently is not. It is harder, but fairer, to recognize what this team might look like without them. The Nittany Cyclones were brought here to provide competence, continuity and leadership while Campbell began repairing a roster that had been hollowed out.
They came to uphold the standard, not diminish it.
I spoke with six NFL scouts representing multiple organizations. Their consensus was striking: Campbell inherited a deeper rebuild than most people outside the program originally understood.
Those scouts also warned against treating Curt Cignetti’s transformation of Indiana as college football’s new standard timeline. Cignetti took the losingest program in major-college football history and, in his second season, produced a 16-0 national champion.
If something is unprecedented, it cannot simultaneously be the reasonable expectation for every new coach. Indiana’s achievement was extraordinary precisely because it was an anomaly.
The same scouts consistently returned to Campbell’s history of developing players for the NFL. Brock Purdy, Breece Hall, David Montgomery, Will McDonald IV, Jayden Higgins, Jaylin Noel and others did not arrive in Ames as finished products.
NFL organizations value players who have come through his program because they tend to be developed, tested and prepared.
That does not excuse poor clock management, failed third-down defense, an ineffective running game or questionable decisions. Patience does not mean doing nothing. It means allowing enough time to determine whether problems are being corrected rather than merely explained.
That brings me to Campbell himself.
He was not my first choice, but I want to believe his responses during this difficult stretch are authentic rather than a filibuster designed to run out the clock on accountability.
Campbell has leaned heavily on phrases such as “growing forward” and finding a “pathway forward.” Coach-speak can become grating when losses accumulate. Eventually, the pathway must lead somewhere, and growth must become visible on the scoreboard.
Still, Campbell has not presented himself as someone indifferent to the disappointment.
After the White Out, he acknowledged that the most painful part was being unable to give an extraordinary fan base “the result that they deserve.” He admitted the offensive line consists of five new players learning to function together. He conceded the staff must find more creative ways to pressure quarterbacks. He accepted responsibility for a substitution mistake that cost Penn State a timeout. Those answers did not solve Penn State’s problems, but they did confront them.
Authenticity is not a final indicator of success. Plenty of sincere coaches lose football games.
But authenticity is a foundation from which success can grow. Players can rally around it. Recruits can believe it. Assistants can work within it. A program undergoing upheaval needs it.
So, yes, Penn State fans need to exercise patience.
But Penn State must understand that patience cannot be endlessly withdrawn from an account without making deposits of progress.
Fans should demand better game management. They should expect visible player development. They should scrutinize recruiting, retention and roster construction. They should expect the Nittany Lions to become more disciplined and more competitive as the season advances.
Patience should never become permission to stagnate.
At the same time, not every delay is a denial. Six games are not enough to know whether Campbell will succeed at Penn State. They are enough to raise legitimate questions, but not enough to supply final answers.
Good things take time but time alone does not make something good. Campbell must use it. Penn State must show that the losses are teaching it something. The Nittany Cyclones must be judged as players trying to hold a damaged roster together, not outsiders responsible for damaging it.
And the rest of us must remember that patience is not wasted time when it is used to build something stronger.
For now, Penn State should be judged neither by the promise of what Campbell says is coming nor solely by the disappointment of what has already happened.
Judge the program by what it does next.
Slow and steady only wins the race when steady is moving in the right direction.
