This wasn’t Kenni Burns’ first time coaching against Penn State football.

Burns stood on the west sideline when Minnesota played in Penn State’s 2022 White Out. Then, he served as the Golden Gophers running backs coach. On Saturday, he stood on that same sideline as Kent State’s head coach.

Kent State served as one of Penn State’s two “buy games” of the 2024 season, where the Nittany Lions give a lower-tier team a massive payday to serve as a warmup game in Beaver Stadium. In Burns’ case, he and the Golden Flashes made a reported $1.6 million to lose 56-0.

Kent State was never supposed to be a difficult opponent for Penn State. In his time at Kent State, Burns has amassed a 1-14 record. The Athletic has Kent State ranked No. 134 in the FBS — dead last.

Kent State hasn’t won a game this season, either. The Golden Flashes have lost to Pitt, St. Francis, and Tennessee. St. Francis is an FCS school. Tennessee scored 65 points in the first half alone.

Still, Burns said the Golden Flashes came into Beaver Stadium intending to win.

“I think that people look at last week’s score and expect us to quit and give up. That’s not how we’re built,” Burns said. “These guys are young. They’re eager. They’re improving each week.”

For a moment, Kent State didn’t look half bad. Penn State’s defense was stifling, but the Golden Flashes held the Nittany Lions to a seven-point lead after the first quarter.

However, when starting quarterback Devin Kargman went down on the second play of the game, things were always going to be rough for Kent State. Kargman took a brutal hit from defensive end Dani Dennis-Sutton that, according to Burns, put Kargman in the emergency room.

“When Dev went down, I knew the explosive play battle was going to be hard from that standpoint. Because J.D. [Sherrod] has got some strengths, but throwing the ball down the field is not one of them. He does a better job of his feet in the immediate pass game.”

Still, that wasn’t the end of the game for Kent State. For Burns, his team just needed to keep playing and putting in effort longer than it did.

“I don’t think Dev going down rattled us as much as people think,” Burns said. “I think the team rallied around that and built some confidence. And, end of the first quarter, 7-0, we’re right there. And so again, we just gotta play harder for longer.”

Penn State paying teams to play isn’t new nor novel. Plenty of college football teams pay lower-level teams to ramp up for play in Power Four games.

However, it doesn’t always work out as intended. Michigan infamously lost to Appalachian State in 2007. Two weeks ago, then-No. 5 Notre Dame lost to Northern Illinois. The history of college football is littered with Davids taking down Goliaths with little more than intense self-belief and a little luck.

Burns said his players saw the Northern Illinois upset and wanted to do what those teams did. However, he said, they just weren’t ready.

“I think the one thing you’ll see is the guys that typically do that, they got their culture in place. They’ve been there for quite a while,” Burns said.

“That’s what I told them in the locker room. I said, ‘Guys, listen, I know you want this game. You want to win these games. We’re not there yet. We got to get there, and I’m going to show you how to get there, but you’ve got to trust the process as a football team.'”

Despite suffering back-to-back blowouts, Burns said the future is getting brighter for the Golden Flashes, saying Kent State’s losses against Tennessee and Penn State can help the Golden Flashes “tremendously” in the future.

“I truly feel that way, and I’m not afraid to say that. If we use what we’ve learned the past two weeks, and against the talent that we played in, the schematics that we played against, I think we’ll be just fine in conference play.

“But they got to use it. They got to learn from it. They got to have a real conversation with themselves.”