STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Within minutes of Rob Bolden being named Penn State’s starting quarterback in 2010, he called his parents.

“I just simply told my dad, ‘I’m getting off the bus first,’” Bolden recalled this week, a nod to the Penn State tradition of the starting quarterback leading the team into Beaver Stadium. “From there, it was surreal.”

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Bolden, the sixth-ranked quarterback in the 2010 recruiting class in the 247Sports Composite, then retreated to his mandatory freshman study hall. He watched as his Facebook account blew up with friend requests and well wishes from strangers. Teammates told the 18-year-old what to expect when he’d sit in the front seat of the blue school bus with Joe Paterno and wide receivers Derek Moye and Graham Zug riding to the stadium in the seats behind him.

“They said there’s gonna be people hitting on the sides of the bus and people are gonna be screaming your name. I’m like, ‘I got a game to play!’” Bolden said. “You’re taking all that in and then having to perform on top of it.”

Being the starting quarterback at Penn State is an exclusive club. There’s a shared bond in this fraternity, and only those who have done it know what it takes and how much pressure comes with it. Drew Allar is expected to join the club Saturday night when the sophomore will presumably make his first career start against West Virginia, though James Franklin has yet to officially anoint him as QB1.

Allar long has been in the spotlight after his recruiting profile skyrocketed from a relatively unknown quarterback in Medina, Ohio, to a can’t-miss, five-star prospect. It’s that very ranking that has had fans buzzing long before Allar set foot on campus.

“A lot of people are saying that from an arm-talent standpoint, he’s probably the best or one of the best that’s ever come out of this school,” said former Penn State quarterback Michael Robinson, now an analyst for NBC’s Big Ten coverage. “That’s a tremendous amount of pressure.”

History hasn’t necessarily been kind to Penn State’s highly touted quarterback signees over the past couple of decades. Blue-chip quarterbacks like Anthony Morelli, Christian Hackenberg, Kevin Newsome, Paul Jones, Pat Devlin and Bolden have more often than not left the program with careers that didn’t match their recruiting pedigree.

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A Penn State quarterback hasn’t been selected in the first round of the NFL Draft since Kerry Collins was picked fifth in 1995. Penn State has had some quality quarterbacks in this span, for sure: Three-star prospect Trace McSorley was a bright spot, former walk-on Matt McGloin eventually supplanted Bolden, Robinson transitioned from quarterback to fullback in the NFL, Daryll Clark was a two-time All-Big Ten pick and Sean Clifford helped lead Penn State to two New Year’s Six bowl games. But since Collins, only McGloin (seven) and McSorley (one) have started an NFL game at quarterback. Hackenberg, who was drafted in the second round, never attempted a pass in the NFL.

If Allar is going to help take Penn State where it wants to go and be the player who people inside the Lasch Football Building believe he is, he’ll have to overcome this part of Penn State’s history, too.

“You would have thought that after going on almost 30 years now there would’ve been another one for sure,” Collins said. “But, why is it? It’s so hard to tell. It’s just kind of the way it’s materialized. Certainly, I benefited from being on an unbelievable offense and an unbelievable team, probably the best that’s gone through there. That certainly had a lot to do with why I got drafted where I got drafted. It’s certainly safe to say they’re due. They’re overdue.”

Morelli sat in the stands last August as Penn State opened the season at Purdue.

Penn State’s highest-ranked quarterback signee of the modern recruiting era — Morelli ranked 15th nationally and was the No. 2 pro-style passer in the 2004 cycle, per Rivals — was taken back to his own playing days. During his junior and senior seasons, Morelli started 26 games. In those seasons, he completed 53 and 58 percent of his passes. He threw 30 touchdowns and 18 interceptions, leading the Nittany Lions to a pair of nine-win seasons sandwiched between Big Ten title runs with Robinson and Clark.

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Seated with his wife and son, Morelli went unnoticed by Penn State fans who were in West Lafayette. It was hard to envision such a scenario in 2004 when the five-star prospect flipped his commitment from Pitt to Penn State.

“I’m so far removed now that I don’t think fans would remember me,” Morelli said.

Morelli still watches Penn State whenever he can and tells his kids about a career that he cherishes, two bowl wins included, even if it didn’t go as many thought it would.

“Running out of that tunnel for the first time ever as a freshman was absolutely amazing,” Morelli said. “I get chills right now just talking about it. It was the experience of a lifetime. … The only thing that I probably would’ve changed is I probably should’ve redshirted when I came in. I played as a freshman, played as a sophomore, started my junior year, senior year. I just think being there one more year with that offensive line, those guys that I came in with, would’ve just been incredible. Anytime you have a dominant offensive line like that, the sky is the limit.”

After Morelli’s playing career ended in 2011 with stints in the NFL and Arena Football League, he contemplated becoming a college football coach. He opted against the transient lifestyle and instead transitioned into training athletes in Indiana. That has morphed into quarterback-specific training. One of Morelli’s pupils, quarterback Danny O’Neil, is a three-star prospect who is committed to Colorado. Morelli has helped O’Neil navigate his recruitment and also tries to prepare him for the inevitable criticism that comes with the position.

“It’s always easy being an outsider looking in,” Morelli said. “You see it on TV a lot clearer, and it looks like it’s moving a lot slower so you’re like why did he make that throw or that read? When you’re down there and everything is flying in front of you, it’s not as clear as the eye in the sky. You gotta be patient. It’s part of the process.”

Bolden wishes that at 18 years old he would’ve better understood what being a leader entails. He thought he knew, but now he thinks about how he could’ve built stronger relationships with his teammates and coaches. Clark worked with Bolden that spring as he competed with Jones, Newsome and McGloin for Clark’s old job.

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Bolden sustained a concussion in a game at Minnesota that October and then watched as his starting job morphed into an open competition again. It resulted in a timeshare with McGloin before Bolden lost the job. The freshman who was giddy to step off the bus in Week 1 was rattled.

“That was the first time that I had to respond to a situation where things weren’t in my favor,” Bolden said. “I still was the same player and had the same tools to do great things on the field, but my confidence kind of took a hit, and I never really got that back. … You gotta lean on those relationships and those people and them being able to have a conversation with you and kind of spot the lie like, ‘Hey, you’re thinking this about yourself,’ and that’s not necessarily true. I think I needed a lot of that during that time.”

After Bolden’s second season at Penn State — in which he largely sat behind McGloin — he transferred to LSU. He later graduated from LSU and transferred to Eastern Michigan.

“Everything ended very abruptly at Penn State,” Bolden said. “I was there one day and gone to Louisiana the next. Even the conversations among my teammates, I never really even had the opportunity to do that. There’s a lot there. Some has been reconciled and other parts maybe not so much.”

Bolden wasn’t sure how he would be received when he returned to Penn State in 2017 with former teammate C.J. Olaniyan. The two watched Saquon Barkley star in the White Out as lettermen on the Beaver Stadium sideline. Bolden was even at Lucas Oil Stadium in 2016 when Penn State won the Big Ten.

“I don’t have any hard feelings against the program at all,” he said. “I loved the place.”

He notices when fans do double-takes. Even now, back home in Michigan, strangers will approach and ask if he’s indeed the Rob Bolden, the once-touted quarterback recruit who now works in financial planning.

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For years, friends at his church couldn’t understand why Bolden, who was obsessed with football since he was 12, wanted nothing to do with playing fantasy football or following college football or the NFL.

This season, as he told his clients in his newsletter, he’s getting back into caring about football. He plans to watch Penn State, too.

“I feel like I just suppressed (this part of my career) for so long because I didn’t want to really deal with those things,” Bolden said. “Now, I’m like this was a very cool part of my life that has a lot of stories and value that I probably should bring up and kind of engage now.”

Franklin sat down with Collins this offseason in Nashville, where Collins resides. The two had met before when Collins returned to campus. This time, their conversation shifted to Allar.

“I know James is really excited about having him there, and he really, really thinks he can be a special player,” Collins said. “We talked a lot about everything that’s going on in college football and with the team. I know he’s very excited to see what this kid can do.”

Allar is listed at 6 feet 5 and 243 pounds, measurements that are similar to Collins’ during his collegiate career (6-5, 235). Both quarterbacks stepped into an offense where there was plenty of talent around them. Allar inherits two standout running backs, a deep group of tight ends and an experienced offensive line anchored by perhaps the best left tackle in the nation in Olu Fashanu.

This roster is a luxury that not all of Penn State’s other blue-chip quarterbacks have had.

“He does not have to go out there and sling it around 40 times for them to be in a position to win,” said former Penn State quarterback and current NBC analyst Todd Blackledge. “He doesn’t have to, you know, make every critical play on third down. I think just him playing within himself and leaning on what they can do well right now will help him grow. … He’s got the talent to be a great player, but I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight. … You don’t care how many stars you have behind your name from the recruiting analysts, you still have to play and grow and learn as a starting quarterback.”

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Allar played in 10 games last season as Clifford’s backup. Those snaps, whether when he was thrust onto the field with the first-team offense against Purdue or in mop-up time against Rutgers, should help with the transition. That should go a long way in helping lessen some of the nerves that every first-time starter has dealt with as they’ve run out of the Beaver Stadium tunnel.

Collins said he felt like he was flying by the seat of his pants during his first start.

“I used to call it being cold and calculated,” Collins said. “You’re different than everybody else. Yeah, you should play the game with emotion, but you have to keep it under control. You gotta use your brain.”

Bolden said he hasn’t thought about his debut in years. His family still has pictures of it, and every now and again someone will show him the video where he steps off the bus and walks through the crowd as the first freshman to open a Penn State season as the starting quarterback. He sees a young man without facial hair who had no idea what the next months, let alone years, would hold.

It’s the moments from this day that will stay with Allar, as they have for all the other quarterbacks, no matter how his Penn State career unfolds.

“The expectations on him are through the roof,” Blackledge said. “By all accounts, he seems like he’s got the right temperament, he’s got the right personality, he wants to be great. He’s got humility — and he’s got talent. He’s got major talent.”

(Top photo of Drew Allar: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)

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