DETROIT — As both the Big Ten and the College Football Playoffs expand, the fact of the mater is nobody knows what will happen next. There is an uncertainty in all of it, a collective holding of the breath like a chemistry teacher who has left students behind with a bunch of chemicals, a few test tubes and little adventurous free time. Something is going to happen, but nobody knows what.
The only thing for certain is that nothing will be the same. The old assumptions will be void, the old arithmetic will no longer hold true. The math of college football is changing but what the new math looks like will be rediscovered in real-time.
It seems like a feel-good cliche to walk out of the final game of Penn State’s regular season, a 42-0 win over Michigan State on Friday night, trying to sell everyone on the idea that winning a bunch of games against not very good teams – losing the only two that anyone really cared about – is a roaring success. Not counting the COVID season Penn State has won 10 or more games five out of the last seven years but it has come with only a handful of moments you can really sink your teeth into. All of them have come second fiddle to the bigger prizes. It has become the great irony of Penn State’s time under James Franklin that the Nittany Lions are having a fairly historic level of success while also having a fairly historic level of “almost” to go alongside it. Then again, as the Big Ten adds programs that won’t make winning any easier, winning at all shouldn’t be scoffed at.
If you’re Penn State, the hope is that change will be a good thing and that 10-2 seasons are [and the evidence suggests as much] good enough to make the playoffs more regularly in a 12-team field. When this becomes the case the conversation changes and the Nittany Lions will try to find some comfort in the fact they’ve won a healthy share of bowl games against quality opponents. If Penn State has anything going for it in a world beyond Michigan and Ohio State, it’s that it has done fairly well against comparably good opponents outside of the Big Ten. In turn it’s not that hard to imagine the Nittany Lions making a run, playing a season that’s all about getting hot instead of staying perfect.
“I think we’re playing our best football right now and kind of trending up at the right time,” Penn State coach James Franklin said after the game. “But that’s for next year. This year we played good enough to win 10 games and hopefully get a New Year’s Six Bowl and play well in that.”
There’s an obligation in the final stages of a season to tie it all together into a pretty bow and file it away on the shelf. Penn State will always have to stomach the fact that the Nittany Lions were just a slightly above average offense away from likely beating Ohio State or Michigan or both teams this year. The Nittany Lions have a national title quality defense. No matter how good 10-2 is, there will always be that fact. Then again every team is only the reversal of its weaknesses away from being better.
Also true is a fitting reminder from across the field in Michigan State. The Spartans made the four-team playoffs in 2015, and in the following eight seasons won 10 or more games just twice, went through two head coaches and find themselves batting through a legal battle over the millions of dollars it may or may not end up owing former head coach Mel Tucker. Many programs have used the postseason as launch pad towards better while and instead the Spartans have used it as a diving board.
So yes, it is fair to find yourself sighing in resignation to the fact Penn State’s 10-2 season is objectively quite good but also objectively a predictable sequence of results that are somehow simultaneously encouraging and discouraging. The 2023 season was not full of evidence anything is going to change, but it also is not evidence that things are getting worse. Depending on who you are that counts for something.
And as the world around it shifts and moves, Penn State holding steady and knocking at the door isn’t the worst place to be.
“Nobody has higher expectations than the players and coaches,” Franklin added. “…I’m proud of how we played tonight and how consistently we played this year. But obviously there’s some steps that we have to take and I’m confident that we’re gonna take those steps and be aggressive. My confidence comes from the alignment of our leadership … and hopefully consistency within our football [building].”
What happens next? Well, nobody knows, but there’s a smell coming from that chemistry classroom.
