For those who think Penn State stands a snowball’s chance in Cuba, well, you never know.
I don’t know if it’s ever snowed in Cuba, but it has snowed in Miami.
However, the odds are better for snow in June in Waynesboro than for Penn State’s football team to advance to the national championship game.
It’s not that the Nittany Lions are not a good team. They’re better than good. But they’re not in the same league as Ohio State, Georgia, Oregon, Texas, et al.
There were a lot of people elated when the College Football Playoff expanded from four teams to 12. I was one of them. While the expansion will certainly be a viewer boost, it will likely confirm that the selection process that applied to the four-team tournament will end up being similar when the final four teams are announced.
The question becomes: Will Penn State stand a chance to make it to the semifinals? The answer: Yes.
But it’ll have to step up its game on offense, defense and special teams to do it. Remember, the Lions led Ohio State 10-0 but made some costly mistakes on both sides of the ball and lost 20-13. It didn’t cost Penn State too much in the weekly rankings the next day, and after thrashing Washington 35-6, it finds itself ranked fourth.
The prognosis for another 10-win season in Happy Valley is really good. However, in order for the Nittany Lions to crack the elite-team status, they will have to recruit more elite players and find better coaching continuity. That means the revolving door of offensive and defensive coordinators has to get fixed and head coach James Franklin had better figure out how to beat Ohio State.
Franklin is lucky he isn’t coaching Alabama. In 1989, the Crimson Tide went 10-1 in the regular season. The loss was to Auburn. After a Sugar Bowl loss to Miami, head coach Bill Curry was fired.
Franklin is 1-10 against Ohio State.
Penn State will be favored in its three remaining games. The Lions play at Purdue on Saturday, at Minnesota the next week and close out the season at home against Maryland.
All things being equal, the 2024 team is good enough to make it past the first two rounds. I’m concerned about quarterback Drew Allar’s ability to manage a game against a team on Penn State’s level for four quarters. Allar, an Ohio boy, showed a lot in the Lions’ comeback win over USC. PSU trailed 20-6, then, the 6-foot-5 QB completed two fourth-down passes on a game-tying drive that forced overtime. Penn State won 33-30.
If Penn State makes some of the same play calls against a team like Ole Miss or any of the other 11 teams in the playoffs, it might not make it past the first round. Even so, the defense is good enough to win a 10-7 game regardless of poor offensive play.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
For those old enough to remember the 1979 Sugar Bowl, yes, that game – the one when Penn State tried to run off tackle three straight plays and it cost the Lions a national title. After seeing the unimaginative play-calling in critical parts of the Ohio State game, I wondered if Penn State is cursed, or if it is accepting its place as a good-but-not-great team.
If the season ended today, Penn State would be seeded sixth and would play Ole Miss. The winner would play BYU, which would get a first-round bye. The winner of that game would play the winner of Texas-Indiana/Alabama in the semifinals.
Time will tell if Penn State can build on its already-illustrious history.
