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THE ROAD AHEAD The Nittany Lions know what they must do if they're going to become CFP contenders he numbers are all there. Pro- vided helpfully by Penn State's in-house communications arm, the Nittany Lions didn't just finish the season ranked No. 17 in the final polls. For the first time since the 1990s, Penn State finished in The Associated Press's Top 25 in three consecutive seasons. Further, the official press release reads, the 40 weeks PSU has spent ranked in the Top 25 constitute the fifth-longest span for the program and the longest since the team made 121 consecutive ap- pearances from 1993 to 2000. Yet, in dropping a 27-24 decision to Kentucky in the Citrus Bowl on New Year's Day, Penn State ended the season on an undeniably disappointing note. It was the Lions' fourth defeat of the sea- son, coming on the heels of losses to Ohio State, Michigan State and Michi- gan. Except for the Spartans, all of those teams finished in the final AP poll, with the Buckeyes landing third, the Wildcats 12th and the Wolverines 14th. As for the nine victories that Penn State amassed, they came against a col- lection of teams with a combined 52-61 record. Iowa was the only one of those teams to appear in the year-end AP poll, rounding out the field at No. 25. Ap- palachian State went 11-2 but wasn't ranked in the final Top 25. Five of Penn State's wins came against teams that finished the season with losing records, and a sixth – Pittsburgh – slipped to 7-7 with its loss to Stanford in the Sun Bowl. After Penn State came up short in the Citrus Bowl, its last opportunity for a win against a ranked opponent, head coach James Franklin expressed frustra- tion over the loss to the Wildcats, as well as the losses that preceded it. "Obviously, we're disappointed. The losses that we had this year, they're hard. They're hard for us to swallow. They're hard for the fan base to swal- low," he said. "I get it. I watch college football like everybody else does. It's hard. It's hard to win at the highest level." Even so, he continued, the consistency his team has showed during the past three seasons has put it on solid ground as it looks to the future. The Lions have gone 31-9 since the start of the 2016 season, a record that ranks among the best in college football over that span. "We've had three really good years. You look at our last three years com- pared to most programs in the country, we're up there with the best of them. But we played a lot of young players this year. I think there's a lot of excitement, a lot of hope for our future," Franklin said. "Obviously, today hurts, but I know that locker room… is excited about the fu- ture. We got some things that we've got to get cleaned up. We've got some things that we've got to get corrected, and we've got to take ownership of all those things." Most notably, the Nittany Lions need JUDGMENT CALL T

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