Penn State Football: Nittany Lions Move in to Top 5 in Newest Rankings

Penn State football moved up one spot to No. 5 in this week’s AP Top 25 poll.

The Nittany Lions took down Michigan State 28-7 in East Lansing on Saturday afternoon. Sean Clifford threw three touchdown passes — three to Pat Freiermuth, and another to KJ Hamler — to pace the Nittany Lions to their first victory in East Lansing since the 2009 season. With the victory, Penn State improved to 8-0 on the year. The team hadn’t begun a season with eight consecutive victories since the 2008 season before this week.

Oklahoma, now ranked No. 10, was the AP’s fifth-ranked team in the nation entering week nine of this college football season, but Lincoln Riley’s squad fell to unranked Kansas State 48-41. That upset enabled Penn State to enter the AP’s top five for the first time since 2017, which is when the team was No. 2 in the nation during Saquon Barkley’s final season of college football.

Penn State has now been ranked in the AP Top 25 poll for 50 consecutive weeks — good enough for the fifth-longest active streak in all of college football. Alabama (189 consecutive weeks), Ohio State (123), Clemson (78), and Oklahoma (52) are the only other teams with longer streaks than the Nittany Lions. James Franklin’s program has moved up 10 spots since earning the No. 15 spot in the 2019 preseason AP Top 25 poll, and it’s been ranked since the team pulled off a White Out upset of then-No. 2 Ohio State at Beaver Stadium on October 22, 2016.

In addition to this week’s AP Top 25 poll, Penn State checked in at No. 5 in the newest Coaches’ Poll. The Nittany Lions began this season at No. 14 in that poll, and it’s only moved up since the beginning of the year.

No. 5 Penn State (8-0, 5-0 Big Ten) is idle this week, but will take on No. 13 Minnesota (8-0, 5-0 Big Ten) in a battle of undefeated squads at TCF Bank Stadium on November 9.