Penn State needs to get past some of its fans’ idea of the football uniform as a monument to the past.
I get it. Many of the traditions that mark it, from the nameless jerseys to the black shoes, go back decades. Many of them have their roots in the way Joe Paterno emphasized team over individual, substance over flash. Since his passing in 2012, a lot of people have clung even more tightly to “black shoes, basic blues, no names, all game” as the most visible representation of his complicated legacy in Happy Valley. Ask successor Bill O’Brien, who faced an uproar when he put names on the jerseys for a couple of years to honor players who stuck with the program through NCAA sanctions.