Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1524108
1 8 A U G U S T 2 0 2 4 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M / / / / / / / 2 0 2 4 F O O T B A L L P R E V I E W / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / W hen the buses pull away from the Lasch Building ahead of the season opener on Aug. 31, Penn State will be heading into unfa- miliar territory. No, not Morgantown. The home of West Virginia University may be a hazy memory to longtime PSU fans, the Mountaineers having last played host to their border rival in 1992, but the Nittany Lions have at least been there before. The real mystery lies off in the distance in the form of an expanded Big Ten and a College Football Playoff that has tripled in size from four teams to 12. That's terra incognita. Will college football's sweeping changes help Penn State achieve its am- bitions? Or will they make the path to national championship contention even harder than it was during James Frank- lin's first decade in State College, dur- ing which the team often found itself trapped between worlds — better than nearly all of its conference opponents but not quite good enough to make the playoff? With the 2024 campaign fast approaching, we'll soon start getting some answers. Franklin is acutely aware that PSU fol- lowers aren't satisfied with the status quo. "Obviously, at a place like Penn State … there are certain games that you're going to be judged by," he told BWI's Nate Bauer earlier this summer. "When your numbers in those games don't align with those other numbers, people are going to be critical." In the national media, Penn State has been judged by how it stacks up against Ohio State and Michigan. During Frank- lin's tenure, the Lions have put together a combined record of 4-16 against the league's two traditional powers. Un- der the East-West divisional split, PSU never did beat both of them in the same year. In six of 10 years, it lost to both, and as far as the playoff was concerned, A highly regarded PSU football team prepares for college football's brave new world M AT T H E R B | M AT T. H E R B @ O N 3 . C O M INTO THE NTO THE UNKNOWN NKNOWN