Blue White Illustrated

those players aAer a season-opening loss to Navy, and they led the Lions to a 17-8 victory at Miami in week two. In week three, they lost to third-ranked UCLA by only two points. They wouldn't lose again until September 1970. It's now been nearly >ve decades since Penn State rose to national prominence. The game has changed drastically, but as James Franklin gets set to begin his sec- ond season as Penn State's head football coach, it's not hard to >nd parallels be- tween the two eras. In Franklin's >rst season, as in Pater- no's, the Nittany Lions had to scramble to avoid a losing record. They had to face the wrath of a disenchanted fan commu- nity, one that may not have had the head coach's phone number but did have the Internet as a way to get its point across. And although Franklin and his sta@ headed into the o@-season con>dent they had attracted the kind of athletes they would need in order to be success- ful, they had no way of knowing – and still don't – whether those athletes will be ready to step into key roles in 2015. Many of them played sparingly in 2014, and many others didn't play at all, some because they were redshirting, others because they were still in high school or junior college. There are a couple of ways that a guy in Franklin's position could interpret Penn State's history, particularly its his- tory of bouncing back from bad seasons and even bad epochs. The >rst way to think of it is as a burdensome weight that coaches and players must carry, in- spiring sky-high expectations even as the program is dealing with the kind of impediments Penn State hasn't faced since it decided unilaterally in the 1930s and '40s to stop giving out athletic scholarships. You can imagine the radio call-in conversation: Hi Coach, Chuck from Allentown here. Just want you to know we're all pulling the rope in the same direction here in the Lehigh Valley. Listen, I know you've got fewer scholar- ship players than everybody on your schedule, and that you're gonna be rely- ing on a lot of freshmen and sopho- mores, and that you've got road games against the two best teams in the con- ference, including the defending na- tional champion, which you haven't beaten since 2010. But me and guys at work have been talking about this in the break room, and we don't see any reason why you can't run the table this year… That kind of talk sounds enthusiastic and supportive in the preseason, but when the passes start falling incomplete and the three-and-outs begin to pile up, it gets weaponized and eventually de- ployed as evidence that the program is underachieving. Franklin has gently pushed back against the notion that it's business as usual now that the sanctions have been liAed. As he told BWI this summer, "People would say that we overcame the sanctions, and in a lot of ways we did. But to say they didn't have a dramatic impact on our program? I don't think people have really spent the time study- ing the challenges that we had." And yet, because this is James Franklin we're talking about, the focus has been on the upside. That's the other way to approach Penn State's history. Sure, it may in?ate expectations, but it also gives the Nittany Lions the credibility they need in order to engage fans, alumni, students, high school coaches and re- cruits in Franklin's rebuilding e@orts. Think of it this way: There are perpetual rebuilding projects under way at some Big Ten schools – Indiana, Purdue and Illinois spring readily to mind – because those programs rarely challenge for league championships anymore. None have won a Big Ten title in the past decade, and Indiana's most recent Rose Bowl appearance was in 1968. But Penn State has the kind of history that makes people want to believe in its potential. It won two league champi- onships in Paterno's >nal decade, and in terms of overall winning percentage, that was the worst decade of his career. The athletic department has developed a network of support so substantial that it can mull moonshot projects, such as building an entirely new football stadi- um, without anyone laughing. All of which makes Franklin a good >t for the program right now. The guy could >nd sunshine in a coal mine at midnight, and aAer nearly two years on the job, his relentless optimism is start- ing to look like more than just an at- 2 0 1 5 P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L Penn State's national championship history dates to 1921, and in recent years the Nittany Lions have moved to the forefront nationally in NCAA title success. Since 2007, when the men's and women's fencing team won the 10th of its 13 NCAA crowns, Penn State has amassed 16 national championships, tying USC for the national lead during that span. The Nittany Lions have won at least one NCAA title in each of the past nine academic years, starting in 2006-07. Penn State's 16 NCAA champi- onships are at least double the number of NCAA titles won by every Big Ten Conference school during the past nine years. Since 1992-93, the Nittany Lions' 27 NCAA championships are more than double every Big Ten school that has competed in the conference for more than one year. (Nebraska and Ohio State are second with 12.) Penn State and USC each have had five teams combine to win their 16 na- tional titles during the past nine years. The Lions won their crowns in women's volleyball (six), men's and women's fencing (four), wrestling (four), men's gymnastics (one) and men's volleyball (one). Florida is third with 15 NCAA titles since March 2007, followed by Oregon and Stanford (14), UCLA (13) and Texas A&M (10). ALL SPORTS PSU leads with 16 NCAA titles since '07

• Cover