Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1503568
1 8 A U G U S T 2 0 2 3 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M / / / / / / / 2 0 2 3 F O O T B A L L P R E V I E W / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / A familiar assortment of Big Ten challengers awaits, but sporting a potent blend of proven veterans and rising stars, Penn State goes into its season feeling ... W ill this be the year? For much of James Franklin's nearly decade-long tenure at Penn State, his team has been knocking on the door leading to college football's most rarified level. In 2016, the Nittany Lions jimmied it open by winning the Big Ten champi- onship, only to see the selection com- mittee for the College Football Playoff slam it shut again, lock the deadbolt and invite Ohio State instead, just to make the pain a little more excruciating. It remains one of only three years in the CFP's nine-year existence in which the Big Ten champ has been excluded. Not that anyone in State College is counting. Since 2017, the Lions have won 11 games three times and have also claimed three New Year's Six bowl victories, the most recent being a 35-21 win over Utah in the Rose Bowl this past Janu- ary. But they've gone 3-9 against Ohio State and Michigan during that span, and their struggles against the East Di- vision's power couple have kept them from making a return trip to the Big Ten Championship Game. That, in turn, has kept them out of playoff contention. Their CFP hopes will rise exponen- tially in 2024 when the field expands to 12 teams, but the Lions would prefer not to wait. They would relish the op- portunity to compete in the last four- team playoff, and it's possible they have a squad capable of making that happen. Fourteen of the players who started the Rose Bowl are back in 2023, and that list doesn't include perhaps the team's best player on either side of the ball — junior offensive tackle Olu- muyiwa Fashanu, a surefire first-round M A T T H E R B | M A T T . H E R B @ O N 3 . C O M READY READY TO TO ROAR ROAR