At Penn State, College Football's New Era Arrives on a Nicholas Singleton Billboard

The Penn State running back looms over a busy State College intersection as part of a Gatorade campaign.

Penn State running back Nicholas Singleton is pictured on a building in downtown State College. / Sm Woloson/Penn State on SI

For as tame as the State College skyline has long been, the emergence of a multi-storied Nicholas Singleton on the intersection of College Avenue and Atherton Street is a stark reminder of how much things have changed. Up go the high-rise buildings, now too the big-city advertisements. Time will tell how frequent such showcases become, but it’s fitting that as the fabric of downtown State College changes, so too does Penn State football’s embrace of a new era in college athletics.

The Singleton showcase (part of Gatorade's campaign to promote its "Nittany Frost" White Out bottle) marks an interesting intersection of how we view student-athletes. Classically, there has always been an unspoken — and sometimes spoken — appreciation for the idea that student-athletes are unpaid and generally uncompensated amateurs. In turn, most reasonably well-adjusted people in and out of the media act accordingly.

The thought brings longtime watchers of college football back to Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy’s famous “I’m a man, I’m 40” speech, in which he chastised a local media member for writing negatively about his quarterback on the front page of the paper.

“I want to talk about this article right here. If anybody hasn't read this article. I think it's worth reading,” Gundy said at the time. “Let me tell you why I want to talk about this article. Three-fourths of this is inaccurate. It's fiction. And, this article embarrasses me to be involved with athletics, tremendously. And that article had to have been written by a person that doesn't have a child. And has never had a child that's had their heart broken and come home upset. And had to deal with the child when he is upset. And kick a person when he's down.”

“Here's all that kid did: he goes to class, he's respectful to the media, he's respectful to the public, and he's a good kid. And he's not a professional athlete, and he doesn't deserve to be kicked when he's down. Here's all that kid did: he goes to class, he's respectful to the media, he's respectful to the public, and he's a good kid. And he's not a professional athlete, and he doesn't deserve to be kicked when he's down.”

And that’s true. There’s no denying college athletes sit firmly on the cusp of childhood and adulthood. One of the basic tenets around patience as it pertains to Drew Allar is the idea that he isn’t very old and hasn’t played quarterback for very long. At its core, college football is a developmental system which requires some degree of patience as players actually develop. Some come out of the box ready to go, but nearly all require some degree of assembly.

It is interesting, though, to question how much longer full-fledged criticism of student-athletes will be handled with any degree of care. There’s nothing wrong with saying Allar, Singleton, Abdul Carter and others need to be better at any given moment. But how long it will be taboo to point the finger more directly is very much up for debate. Simply put, there are college athletes making more than their position coaches. At some point, youth no longer is the shield it once was.

An image of Penn State running back Nicholas Singleton appears on a building in downtown State College. / Sam Woloson/Penn State on SI

Of course, it is easy to write off plenty of corporate NIL deals as investments into what a player might become and not a performance-based salary. Singleton has represented Gatorade since high school, Penn State fans have no real impact into Gatorade’s advertising budget, and buying season tickets has always been more about brand support than about empowering fans to feel like they have any sort of roster control.

Then again, as NIL collectives and university-based NIL funding continues to grow, the line between fan spending and roster management becomes straighter and shorter. If fans are going to cough up ticket money and NIL money (for better or worse), they’ll become increasingly entitled to whatever emotions follow.

That said, we shouldn’t strive for a world where we can more enthusiastically blame people for things. There’s not a moment where Singleton’s billboard makes everyone go, “I’m so glad I can angrily tweet at him now.” But it does illustrate how much things are changing, and how much our old way of thinking about criticizing college athletes might be slowly changing, too.

Simply put, if college athletes make more money than the fans paying to see them play, at what point does their youth and “not technically professional” status no longer protect them from more pointed criticism? And if we slowly are headed in that direction as Penn State heads towards its biggest games of the year, will that be good for the sport?

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Ben Jones has been covering Penn State athletics for 13 years, having been to countless home and road games for Nittany Lion sporting events spanning from the Rose Bowl to the NCAA Tournament. He's also the author of the book Happy Valley Hockey. You can read his work at https://benjonesonpennstate.substack.com and follow him on X (Twitter) at Ben_Jones88