Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1537537
1 0 0 A U G U S T 2 0 2 5 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M E D I T O R I A L MATT HERB MATT.HERB@ON3.COM W hen people talk about the in- creasing professionalization of college sports, they're almost always talking about money. Players are finally getting a piece of the windfall they've been generating all these years. While the sport may have overcorrected when it went from having draconian rules regarding player compensation to essentially no rules at all, it did at least address a longstanding inequity. Two less-frequently-discussed ways in which college football has become more like the NFL is that its regular season is a little more forgiving and its playoff a little more cruel now that the College Football Playoff includes 12 (and maybe soon 16) teams. The change to the regular season has been for the better, allowing legitimate title contenders to slip up without see- ing their title hopes vanish as soon as the clock hits zero on that second loss. Penn State knew that pain all too well. To cite only the most obvious ex- ample, the Nittany Lions won the Big Ten championship in 2016, only to find out a day after their rousing title game victory over Wisconsin that they had actually dropped out of playoff con- tention on Sept. 24 when they lost to Michigan. Ohio State showed the wisdom of the new approach last year when it bounced back from its own loss to the Wolverines by defeating the No. 7, No. 1, No. 3 and No. 5 teams in the CFP poll by a combined score of 145-75 en route to the national championship. Michigan fans will tell you the Buck- eyes' title was tainted because they lost to the Wolverines, but that's just the sour grapes talking. As defensive end Jack Sawyer said during an appearance on Ben Roethlisberger's "Footbahlin" podcast, "If anyone tells you they'd rather go 1-12 and just beat 'That Team Up North,' you're crazy. … You're play- ing this game to win championships." The tradeoff for a more forgiving regular season is a more ruthless play- off. It used to be that half of college football's postseason participants went home happy. The playoff has changed that ratio. Now, 11 of the top 12 teams in the postseason will end their campaigns with a loss. The really unfortunate ones will go out like Penn State did versus Notre Dame in last season's CFP semi- finals — with enough what-ifs to keep players, coaches and fans agonizing for weeks. This dynamic is relevant to the Nit- tany Lions in 2025, because a lot of people outside the program are touting them as the kind of team that could, and maybe even should, emerge victorious from the 12-team scramble for the CFP championship. In Athlon's season preview maga- zine, an anonymous Big Ten assistant coach said, "This is the season James Franklin's entire coaching career could be judged by. If they can't change their big-game problems with this group, it's not happening." A recent column in The Daily Col- legian was even more blunt: "If blue and white confetti doesn't rain down in Hard Rock Stadium this time around, and Franklin isn't hoisting the national championship trophy after 11 years at the helm, the Nittany Lions' season is a bust." The problem with these sorts of ex- treme pronouncements is that they lay the groundwork for an equally extreme backlash if the campaign doesn't end in a CFP title. It bears mentioning that Texas, not Penn State, is the favorite according to the FanDuel Sportsbook at +500, so maybe the confetti will be burnt orange. Or maybe it'll be red and black, since Georgia is at +600. Or maybe — shudder — it'll be scarlet and gray again. The Buckeyes check in at +600, too, ahead of Penn State at +750. Amid ever-rising external demands, Franklin finds himself in the tricky po- sition of needing to set high standards while also having to manage the fallout that inevitably follows every loss. The first of those imperatives comes natu- rally to any coach, but the second is hard, as Franklin hinted at in a recent interview with BWI's Nate Bauer. "Because the expectations are so high and people are so passionate, when you lose around here, it can be really tough on the players and the staff," he said. "That's why you've got to teach play- ers and staff what it's like so they can bounce back quickly, because it can be negative." Maybe someday, college football will be more like college basketball. Sixty- eight teams enter the NCAA Tourna- ment every year, and 67 finish with a loss. The math is so brutal that schools have taken to celebrating all the steps along the way — the Sweet 16s and Elite Eights and Final Fours. You don't have to win the whole thing to feel good about your season. That's not the world that college football's top teams live in these days. For many followers of Texas, Georgia, Ohio State, Penn State and others, it's championship or bust. The only way to assure yourself a happy ending is to be in the confetti business. ■ James Franklin is looking to lead his team even deeper into the College Football Playoff after last year's loss to Notre Dame in the semifinals. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL A Challenging Path Awaits All Title Hopefuls VARSITY VIEWS