(01-25-2023 09:51 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-24-2023 08:23 PM)bullet Wrote:  Well Paterno was coach for 46 years. Its a little different than saying something like Boise St. is due to Chris Petersen who was only there 8 years.

Penn St. was #2 much of the 68 and 69 season and finished there. They finished #4 in 1947 and were ranked a number of years before Paterno arrived in 1966. Penn St. was below .500 in 1938. And not again until 1988. They have had only 6 losing seasons since 1938. 4 of the 6 were in a 5 year period from 2000-2004. LSU has only had one losing season since Saban arrived, but they had losing records 8 of the 11 seasons prior to his arrival, including 6 years in a row and 20 since 1938. Penn St. has finished in the top 5 13 times since 1968. LSU 6. They have finished in the top 3 nine times. LSU 5.

Looks like PSU has 14 final top fives since the AP poll started in 1936 and LSU 10.

And actually LSU looks like the newbie looking at W/L records (NCAA record book only has top 20 listed for decades prior to 90s):
2010s PSU 18, LSU 6
2000s PSU 29, LSU 8
1990s PSU 6, LSU 67
1980s PSU 6, LSU not in top 20
1970s PSU 6, LSU not in top 20
1960s PSU 11, LSU 14
1950s PSU 9, LSU not in top 20 despite winning an MNC in 1958-they had 4 winning seasons, 1 .500, 5 losing seasons.

About the bolded, sure, it's a little different. I think that Bowden/FSU would be a fair comparison.

But the point is, IMO at its peak, and I think Penn State's "star power" is past its peak right now, Penn State's owed a significant component to Paterno. It was really Paterno/Penn State star power/brand appeal

With Paterno gone, I think that has diminished, just as FSU's has diminished without Bowden, and I don't think that is changing soon.

As for W/L, I am skeptical about that, as we can't control for SOS. While we know LSU has been playing an "SEC schedule" for forever, I'm not even sure PSU was playing a "big time" schedule before the 1960s, it may have been an east-coast kind of schedule. That said, no question, in the 70s through the 90s, Penn State clearly out-performed LSU. Those are the decades Paterno made a name for the program.

LSU was playing an "SEC" schedule, but it wasn't unusual for them to play only 5 conference games. Sometimes they only played 4. Looking through their schedule, I only see 6 years up until 1989 when the SEC moved to 7 games that LSU did play more than 6. I don't know what PSU's schedule looked like prior to the 70s, but there were a lot of strong teams in the northeast in those days.