NEW YORK Sitting in traffic with car horns blaring, people walking into and out of the street and lights all around gave many of Penn State's football players a fitting welcome to their busy bowl destination.

"It's not my thing," Hackenberg, a Virginia native, said of the New York City traffic. "[As a kid,] I passed more cows than houses going to school."Penn State had a light practice Monday morning before heading to New York City in preparation for the Pinstripe Bowl game Saturday against Boston College (7-5) at Yankee Stadium. Penn State (6-6) shifted its focus to preparing for the Eagles last week, giving the team two weeks of roster development and healing before playing one final game. Possibly no player benefited from the layoff the past three weeks more than the sophomore quarterback who was sacked 42 times this season."It was just good for me to be able to sit back and kind of relax and get my legs back underneath me, be able to do a little rehab here and there," Hackenberg said. "Rest was, I think, the biggest thing. … I think it was huge not only for myself, but for all these guys that were forced to play a season early in their career and play a lot."Waking up the morning after a game where he was peeled off the ground time and time again and learning to deal with the ensuing bumps and bruises are part of the job description. Having the opportunity to play in a bowl game the team's first since the 2012 TicketCity Bowl because of a bowl ban that was part of NCAA sanctions after the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal also is what Hackenberg signed up for when he committed to the Nittany Lions in February 2011.Coach James Franklin said the staff concluded that no current player has won a bowl game. If the Lions are to send the senior class off with its first bowl win, they must find a way to overcome their season-long offensive problems.Part of that will fall on the shoulders of Hackenberg, who worked behind a makeshift line and threw a career-high 15 interceptions."I've tried to say this all year long, I don't really feel like Christian has been our issue," Franklin said. "I've been saying since the end of spring ball that it was the development of all the guys around Christian that was going to allow him to continue to continue to grow as a player, as a leader."I think he's probably grown light years this year as a leader just because he's been put in a lot of difficult situations and had to face a lot of adversity."Hackenberg said this season taught him more about staying the course."I just tried to be the same person day in and day out," he said. "I had a lot of great people around me growing up, my parents, my coach in high school, they've sort of been able to keep me level-headed throughout all of that and [I've] been able to keep pushing through it."Help might be on the way, though not for the bowl game.Baldwin High School offensive tackle Sterling Jenkins signed with Penn State Monday. The four-star prospect will enroll at Penn State in January, joining Lackawanna College offensive tackle Paris Palmer, who signed his national letter of intent last week.