Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1505736
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 3 11 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M this fall — Iowa, Maryland and Illinois — were among the others receiving votes. Minnesota, a team that has dropped off the schedule this year, was also among the unranked vote-getters. In the AP rankings, Wisconsin was 19th, while Iowa was 25th, with Minne- sota and Illinois receiving votes. Franklin has spent his entire head coaching career in the best conferences within the Power Five. He spent three seasons at Vanderbilt, where he went 24-15 overall and 11-13 in the SEC. Now he's coming up on a decade at Penn State, having gone 78-36 overall and 49-30 in the Big Ten in nine seasons. He cited that experience in assessing the challenges that Penn State will face in the months to come. "I've been a head coach in both con- ferences that are a part of that discus- sion [about the nation's best league]," he said, "so I think I've got a pretty good lens on all of this." That lens is bifocal. While Ohio State and Michigan are visible on the distant horizon, looming larger for now is West Virginia, which kicks off the season with its visit on Sept. 2. ■ JOE KRENTZMAN & SON, INC. • Buyers and Brokers of Steel, Iron and Nonferrous Metals • Industrial Scrap Buyers • Container Service Available • Large Service Territory Since 1903 Lewistown, PA • Hollidaysburg, PA • DuBois, PA (800) 543-2000 • www.krentzman.net F irst i n S cra p If Penn State is going to reach the College Football Playoff this year, it's going to have to outperform its preseason rankings, albeit not by much. The Nittany Lions are seventh in the Associated Press and American Football Coaches Association/ USA Today rankings and will need to be in the top four of the CFP poll on Dec. 3 if they're going to have an opportunity to compete for a national championship. The good news for the Nittany Lions is that while they've yet to reach the playoff, they have outperformed their preseason rankings before — three times, in fact, since coach James Franklin took over the program in 2014. The most dramatic of those instances was in 2016, when the team came roaring back from its post-sanction malaise by winning the Big Ten cham- pionship, playing in the Rose Bowl and finishing seventh in both polls after going into the season unranked. The Lions did much the same last year, going into their opener at Pur- due unranked and winning 11 games, including a Rose Bowl victory over Utah, to earn the No. 7 spot in both polls. In 2019, they finished ninth in both the AP and coaches polls after entering the year ranked 15th and 14th, respectively. Conversely, the Lions have fallen short of the pollsters' preseason ex- pectations in four of Franklin's nine seasons. It happened in 2017, '18, '20 and '21, with the most precipitous of those falls occurring during the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign. Coming off a Cotton Bowl victory the previous December, Penn State entered the year as the No. 7 team in both polls, only to lose its first five games. By Week 3, the Lions had dropped out of the rankings, and they never returned, even after finishing the campaign on a four-game winning streak. — Matt Herb PSU Hoping To Surpass Preseason Rankings Again Safety Ji'Ayir Brown celebrated after helping Penn State defeat Utah 35-21 in the 2023 Rose Bowl to cap an 11-2 bounce-back season. PHOTO BY RYAN SNYDER Penn State's Pre- And Postseason Rankings During The Franklin Era Preseason Preseason Final Final Year AP Coaches Record AP Coaches 2023 7th 7th — — — 2022 NR NR 11-2 (7-2 Big Ten) 7th 7th 2021 19th 20th 7-6 (4-5) NR NR 2020 7th 7th 4-5 (4-5) NR NR 2019 15th 14th 11-2 (7-2) 9th 9th 2018 10th 9th 9-4 (6-3) NR NR 2017 6th 6th 11-2 (7-2) 8th 8th 2016 NR NR 11-3 (8-1) 7th 7th 2015 NR NR 7-6 (4-4) NR NR 2014 NR NR 7-6 (2-6) NR NR