For Penn State quarterback Beau Pribula, football has always been a family affair. His brother currently plays (at Sacred Heart, transferring from Delaware, meaning the two won’t share the field in Penn State’s clash against the Blue Hens in Week 2 of the 2023 season) and his dad, uncle and grandfather all played elsewhere. If you could inherit football as a gene, the Pribula family is certainly a strong candidate for that theory.
Growing up in York, backyard football was where the game latched hold of Pribula — as if he ever really had a choice in the first place. Sometimes things call to you; other times you’re simply born that way. Whatever the case might be, nothing buildings toughness like getting buried into the mud of the playground. No flags here, just bruises.
“I grew up in a really good neighborhood with a lot of friends that loved to play football and every weekend, if not every week day after school,” Pribula told StateCollege.com. “It would be like nine or 10 of us out there playing tackle football, going at it every single day. I feel like that’s where I got some of my toughness from, we would beat each other up and I would play all different positions.”
Of course if you grow up in Pennsylvania and love football, chances are you’ve taken in some Penn State football along the way. So for Pribula the idea of wearing a Penn State jersey was a dream, and as his high school career moved along, that dream became more and more of a reality. A reality he couldn’t ignore.
“I was a Penn State fan growing up,” Pribula, who verbally committed to Penn State prior to his junior year of high school, said. “I always loved Penn State and Penn State football. I really wanted put that aside and give the other schools a look, but in reality for me, … being from Pennsylvania and representing the home state and just loving Penn State pretty much my whole life, it just made too much sense and I just wanted to make a decision and make it set in stone and just roll from there.”
Lost somewhere in the shuffle about Penn State’s future is the acknowledgment that Pribula is a pretty good quarterback in his own right. Pribula comes in about 130 spots higher in the 247 Network’s national rankings than Trace McSorley did. It’s an imperfect metric, but it’s not as though Penn State just had to settle for Pribula. He earned that scholarship offer and for nearly a year he was Penn State’s only quarterback commitment. Some of that had to do with how early Pribula committed in the cycle, some of it was his own stock rising.
But then on March 8, 2021, Drew Allar makes the call.
It’s at this point you have to address situation Beau Pribula faces. He turned down opportunities to be at Penn State and could spend his time in State College waiting for the Allar experience to end. If Allar — for any reason — opts to play out the length of his collegiate eligibility, Pribula may never see the field at Penn State in any meaningful fashion (although Penn State’s backup quarterback has taken meaningful snaps ever year since 2018). Everyone wants to give him a fair shake, and until Allar actually plays extensively and actually plays well, the future of Penn State’s quarterback room is still theoretically up in the air. That said, if James Franklin and company were going to stick to their guns with Sean Clifford, it seems unlikely that they will give one of the highest rated quarterback prospects in program history a short leash. It seems even less likely they will opt to play anyone else but Allar from the outset. There’s a reason he got so much playing time last season.
So there sits Pribula, a year spent being the only quarterback committed to Penn State’s class, and then in walks a guy who could end up being a generational talent. Of course Pribula knew this was coming, but nevertheless, it’s a change.
“The coaching staff was always in good communication with me and with their plan to bring in another quarterback in the same class,” Pribula said. “I was completely fine with it. I understood the whole situation. And you know, when looking at schools I never really looked at quarterback rooms. That was never really part of the process for me at all. I’ve always been a competitive guy and realistically the better the quarterback room is, the better I’m gonna end up being. Iron sharpens iron. And I was completely fine with that.”
It also helps in some regards that Allar appears to be a good teammate about the whole thing. Sitting together after the Rose Bowl, Allar tried his best to parry some open-ended questions to his counterpart. You talk to Pribula about Allar and he just sort of smiles the same way you might smile about your incredibly handsome friend at the bar. Yes he’s your friend, and no he doesn’t talk about how handsome he is, but you also don’t need to be reminded for the 100th time how great he looks.
But even if Pribula might some day grow to slightly despise the song and dance, that doesn’t mean he’s blaming Allar for it.
“Being teammates with Drew has been great,” Pribula. “He’s a really humble guy. He’ll never talk about the buzz or anything like that. He’s everything he needs to be. He’s humble. He doesn’t listen to outside noise … He does a great job of handling that and he does a great job being good teammate and especially being in the same quarterback room, all of us working together and being good teammates to each other and that’s really made that go smooth.”
As an interviewer it’s hard not to feel the light guilt that comes with Penn State’s quarterback room and talking to Pribula about his place within it. In some ways it’s an incredibly interesting dynamic to watch someone face down the reality that playing football again might be on hold for a few years and see them embrace it. No amount of positive vibes and media savvy changes the fact that when he puts his head on the pillow Pribula knows that he very, very likely won’t be playing football this year. Maybe he doesn’t think about it often, but he know show depth charts work. He knows how many quarterbacks you tend to put on the field.
And there’s something to be said for embracing it. Whatever happens next in Pribula’s career, sulking won’t get him where he wants to go. You take it one day at a time and then the rest takes care of itself. If you can do that you’re ready for whenever the next opportunity arises. Even if that means waiting around a bit. There’s some backyard football toughness in that acceptance.
“I love the fact that it’s a mentally tough sport,” Pribula said. “You really have to be mentally and physically tough. Football is really not for everybody. And that’s why not everybody plays it. You have to be able to be smart. You have to be tough physically and mentally and I just love the toughness aspect. When you go into a game and you have to grit one out with your teammates, there’s nothing better.”
“You really have to take it day-by-day,” he added. “Really just focus on your goals and have goals in mind for the week. What do I want to do this week, how do I want to be a better leader. What do I want to get better at physically and mentally in the film room. You have to take it day-by-day … if you look into the future, you look at the past, it really doesn’t help … if you just focus on what you can do now and just being the best version of yourself, that’s really all you can do.”
