Welcome to the Andy Staples show. It's another state of the program edition. And it was a very

newsy past month or so. And so we missed some of our big state of the programs when they came out.

So I wanted to make sure we came back around on some of these before media days started

because there's some really interesting teams out there and stories going into the season.

And I think there are going to be some teams that that look very different this year.

And I was talking to Phil Steele, yes, Phil Steele of the magazine the other day, and he said

his bounce back team of the year is the Penn State Nittany Lions.

And so I'm bringing on Audrey Snyder, our incredible Penn State beat rider, and we're talking about a team that

had about as miserable a year as you could during the pandemic year, and they are back,

and they're expected to be the second best team in the Big Ten behind Ohio State. You know, I'm sure Wisconsin feels the same way. But at Penn State, the standard is pretty high. They didn't meet it last year. And Audrey, you and I were talking before we started recording about how weird last year was. And in your state of the program story, you talked to Brent Pry, the defensive coordinator. He said basically it was like the twilight zone walking into the stadium. But it feels like it was more than just

the game day experience. Like what, how strange was last season for Penn State? It was, I think,

I feel like to say it was bizarre, might be an understatement. Even today, like I was scrolling

through, I was on my phone looking at something,

and I came across a photo last year of the stadium. And it's like, there's a game going on,

and there's no one in the stands, except for like a smattering of parents. The whole thing, I mean,

even now, the farther removed we get from it, it just felt surreal. And I live in state

college about 10 minutes away from

the stadium. And so like, you're used to, you know, the town coming alive, the grocery stores packed,

all the fans, the tailgating, all that. And like, it just never happened. And even for the students,

you know, they were enrolled and in-person classes were offered, but a lot of their learning was done

online. Like a lot of kids had maybe one class in person. Maybe some kids only had like two

classes in person the whole year. So it was like really just this weird, isolated thing. And I felt like,

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