Penn State, now 11-1 after James Franklin trounced his former employer Maryland (again), 44-7, has handled its business the right way just about every step of the way in the 2024 season. (Save for five plays from inside the 3-yard line against Ohio State.)
The Nittany Lions’ reward? A showdown with Oregon (12-0, if it beats Washington Saturday night) in the Big Ten championship game, to be played next Saturday, Dec. 7, at 8 p.m. in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. It will be Penn State’s first trip to the Big Ten title game since 2016, when it rode an eight-game winning streak into the championship game, where it came from behind to defeat Wisconsin, 38-31.
How good is this Penn State team, in 2024? Good enough. To make its way cleanly through a schedule that was not filled with mega-heavyweights. To make the 18-team conference title game. To face undefeated and No. 1 Oregon. To maybe earn a first-round bye. To, possibly, win 1, 2, 3 or even 4 College Football Playoff Games.
I mean, someone has to. Why not Penn State? More and more, that seems like a very legitimate question.
And, at this point, good doesn’t cut it. This is on the cusp of being a great team, no matter who, what, when and where they played. (Except for those aforementioned five Bucked-up plays vs. OSU.) Elite? We’ll see.
It has been 2,255 days since Franklin’s infamous good, great, elite speech after the Nittany Lions’ disheartening 27-26 loss to Ohio State in Beaver Stadium on Sept. 29, 2018. (Watch Mark Brennan’s full clip of that speech here.)
I know: Beating a crummy, four-win Maryland team is not like taking down Ohio State. But…this could be Penn State’s year. It will take them at least four more games to find out. Perhaps, even five.
LOSSES AND WINS AND JAMES FRANKLIN
One by one, two by two, The Powers That Be in college football in 2024 have turned into the powers that are not. Michigan, last season’s national champion, has five losses (though the Wolverines, unlike Penn State, did beat Ohio State. Again). The 2023 runner-up, Washington, has five losses — six, if it loses to Oregon. Florida State entered its game with Florida with nine losses, while the Gators had five. Alabama has three, as does Ole Miss, the not-so-best team the $EC could buy. So does Clemson. Utah, which was No. 12 in the AP Top 25 preseason rankings — just four spots below Penn State, at No. 8 — has seven losses. Oklahoma and LSU entered their game Saturday night with nine combined losses. Oklahoma State, which began the season No. 17 in the AP poll, has nine losses.
Penn State has one loss.
CJF’s old-school math works well in the CFP: 12 x 1-0 = 11-1.
The Nittany Lions have slowly risen in the AP Top 25, opening at No. 8 in the AP Poll, then to 8, 10, 9, 7, 4, 3, 3, 6, 4, 4, 4 and…very likely 3.
For the 52-year-old James Franklin, the win after win after win after win after win after win after win after loss after win after win after win after win has propelled him to 99 career victories in 11 seasons as the head coach at Penn State. Franklin’s next victory will be No. 100 as the Nittany Lions’ boss. (He is 99-40, .712).
When Penn State beat Illinois 21-7 back in September, Franklin moved to No. 3 on the all-time victory list among the 17 Penn State head football coaches, passing Bob Higgins (91-57-11, .607), with exactly zero fanfare. On that list, Franklin now trails only Rip Engle (104-48-4, .679) and Joe Paterno (409-136-3.)
Franklin has been on the job for 3,977 days. He is on his third Penn State president, third athletic director, sixth offensive coordinator and fourth defensive coordinator.
His time may be now. You can tell he’s feeling it. A few weeks ago, I asked him about where he thinks things stand with the facilities and resources for Penn State football. His reply was telling. In a nutshell — never better. And thank you, Pat Kraft:
“I will say this: In the last, I guess it’s probably been three years, with Neeli [Bendapudi] and Pat [Kraft] and [BOT chair] Matt Schuyler and pretty soon [David] Kleppinger, it has changed. And, again, very appreciative of the support we’ve gotten over 11 years, but I would say in the last three years it’s been different. I would say specifically in the last year-and-a-half, it’s been different because the first year-and-a-half, when you get on campus, you’re just trying to kind of figure it all out. And once they were able to figure it all out, we are getting the type of support at a level that I think this place demands and should have.
“But we are getting the type of support in the last year-and-a-half through those people that we have not had here. So, are there still things that need to be done? Yes. Yes. We’ll be saying that for the rest of our time here because you guys know it’s constantly a moving target. But I think that was the problem, right? When you stop trying to get better on a daily and a yearly basis and you’re not bold and aggressive with those things all the time, you can fall behind and you can fall significantly behind.
“So, yeah, there’s still a lot of things that we have to get done. But we are closer…not even close…we are closer than we have been in my 11 years, not even close from a support standpoint and a commitment standpoint.”
ROAD TESTED
In 2024, the Nittany Lions have passed every road test: Taking the season-opener in rowdy Morgantown. Trailing for all but 15 seconds in the grandeur of the L.A. Coliseum. Jumping ahead after falling behind 3-0 and 10-7 in Madison. Wearing out already weary Purdue in West Lafayette. And flecking away the Gophers after falling behind 7-0, 10-0, 17-10, 19-16 and 22-16 in wintry Minneapolis.
On Saturday, after beating the Terps (who once had him as their head-coach-in-waiting), Franklin noted how difficult the 2024 season has been.
“It’s hard, especially with the expansion of these conferences,” Franklin. “This is the most competitive the Big Ten has ever been. And to have your team ready to play, week-in and week-out, it is very, very difficult to do. It doesn’t happen very often. And you look around college football, you watch the highlights, it’s not happened.
“So this team finding a ton of different ways to win — blowouts, comebacks, overcoming adversity, winning because of defense, winning because of offense, winning because of special teams…when you play as many games as we do now in college football, and the type of opponents we play, you’re going to have to find different ways to get it done. It may not always be pretty, but I also think that’s the beauty in its own right.
“…Everybody deserves credit,” Franklin added, “because you don’t win 11 games in this type of conference without everybody.”
The 2024 campaign was Penn State’s first undefeated season on the road since 2009. Before that? 1994. The last time the Nittany Lions won a national championship? 37 seasons ago. Just as stunning, it’s been over 9,900 days since Penn State was last ranked No. 1 — on Oct. 18, 1997. Successful, even historic seasons.
It was a grind then. And it’s still a grind now. So says no less an authority than Drew Allar, who is 21-4 as the Nittany Lions’ starting quarterback over the past two seasons. He ain’t complaining.
“I think the biggest part of it is probably the longevity of the season,” Allar told me. “Obviously, this is our 12th game, but it’s been a 14-week regular season with the two byes. And you also add the month of camp, so we’ve really been going at it for 18 weeks straight. Even if we had a bye week, it’s not been an off-week for us as players. So mentally it’s a grind mentally and physically due to the physical nature of football.
“It’s about not feeling bad for yourselves, because we’re fortunate enough to be playing meaningful football, and there are a lot of teams across the country that this might have been their last game, no matter what the outcome of their game was. We’re playing a lot of meaningful football right now. We don’t take that for granted.
“At the end of the day, this is what we signed up for, for opportunities and to be in positions like this. So we cannot complain about some of the things that come with it. It’s the position we always wanted to be in.”
The Nittany Lions are 32-6 over their last three seasons — 11-2, 10-3 and 11-1. And in some ways, with the 2024 Road to No. 1 now going through Indy and including the first 12-team CFP, this is only the beginning.
