STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — It happened again. Penn State played an opponent whose tier it is on — a reliable double-digit winner, a conference front-runner, a playoff favorite, yada yada — and the Nittany Lions lost.
Saturday night, it was Oregon by a score of 30-24 in double overtime. But it has been Michigan, Ohio State or Notre Dame in the recent past. Swap the helmets and the logos, and as long as the opponent is ranked in the top 6 of the Associated Press Top 25 poll at the time the game is played, the result has been almost always the same under James Franklin.
Here we are again with a Penn State program that is now 2-21 against AP top 6 opponents under James Franklin, the second-worst record by any FBS head coach all time in such games (minimum 20). Penn State has lost 15 straight in that category, dating back to 2016.
“I get that narrative, and it’s really not a narrative,” Franklin said. “It’s factual, it’s the facts. I get it, but I try to look at the entire picture and what we’ve been able to do here. But at the end of the day, we got to find a way to win those games. I totally get it and I take ownership and I take responsibility. At the end of the day, I wanted that for those kids in that locker room. How hard they work, how much they sacrifice. And we had our opportunities.”
The full picture of Franklin’s success should be noted: 104–43 in Happy Valley with six double-digit win seasons, including three straight. A semifinal berth in the College Football Playoff and a runner-up Big Ten finish were strong notes to end 2024, though each of those losses only make the “Big Game James” stat look worse.
There were reasons to believe it would be different this time. There are always reasons. In the end it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter that Penn State had largely decimated a de facto preseason slate of weaker opponents by a combined score of 132-19, winning each by 30-plus points for the fourth time in school history (in fact, you wonder if they could have benefited from a stiffer tune-up test before Oregon came to town).
It didn’t matter that a rabid White Out crowd filled Beaver Stadium to the second-largest capacity in the stadium’s history 30 minutes before the game even started and created a din throughout the night.
It didn’t matter that quarterback Drew Allar had another year of experience, or that many of Penn State’s best players came back from last year’s team for a “Last Dance” type of run, or that a revamped wide receiver room through the transfer portal seemingly addressed last year’s biggest weakness.
It didn’t matter that Franklin swiped Jim Knowles from Ohio State to come run his defense.
It didn’t matter the Nittany Lions fought back from two scores down in the fourth quarter to tie the game and send it to overtime, and it didn’t matter that they again came so agonizingly close.
None of it matters because his Nittany Lions have again been unable to get the job done at the most important time. In five of the last six games against top six teams, the performance has been eerily similar: A defense that, overall, has held up its end of the bargain, but an offense that has taken far too long to get in gear.
James Franklin nixes Penn State two-point conversion idea before overtime against Oregon
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Franklin harped on first-down struggles putting them continually behind the eight ball against the Ducks.
The boo birds were out early as Penn State’s offense struggled, and the frustration boiled over after Oregon scored to make the score 17-3. From the student section, a clearly audible “Fire Franklin” chant was briefly belted into the night before the tide briefly turned and the Lions stormed back to force overtime.
Allar threw an interception to begin Penn State’s series in second overtime, a sad callback to his ill-fated penultimate throw of the 2024 season vs. Notre Dame.
“I feel bad, because (Franklin) has to take the blame for all this stuff,” Nick Dawkins said. “I feel personally responsible. I wish I would have played better and maybe that wouldn’t have happened. Maybe we win and rewrite that narrative.”
After embracing his quarterback and Ducks head coach Dan Lanning, Franklin stood alone before joining his team arm in arm to sing the school’s alma mater. As he stoically swayed to the old song with two staffers, his daughter Addy squeezed in next to him and they stayed embracing after the fact.
They left the field together holding hands as they often enter it for the pregame lap as father and daughter. They entered the blue-lit tunnel amid a mix of cheers and jeers with equal parts cursing and clapping from the fans that stayed to serenade the Franklins.
The chasm between great and elite is college football’s hardest to traverse. It seems so attainable, but it is often much further away than you might think. No matter how close James Franklin feels his program is, the facts don’t care about his feelings.
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