There should be no debate. No questions. No uncertainty. Penn State and coach James Franklin are, without question, the biggest winners of Sunday’s expanded College Football Playoff bracket.
The Nittany Lions are the sixth seed and get an incredibly easy road to the semifinals. Despite no major wins. Despite losing their only two games against top opponents, Oregon and Ohio State.
Penn State opens as a 9-point favorite over No. 11 SMU, then would draw third-seeded Boise State — the third-highest-ranked conference champion, out of the Mountain West — in the quarterfinals. Franklin couldn’t have been happier. Penn State would’ve actually been in a worse spot had it won the Big Ten championship game Saturday night, even though it would’ve come with a bye week.
Oregon, the No. 1 seed, has a tougher path, having to get past the No. 8 Ohio State/No. 9 Tennessee winner after said bye. SEC champion and No. 2 Georgia will likely have to knock off seventh-seeded Notre Dame to advance to the semifinals. Texas, the fifth seed, has the second-easiest path, hosting No. 12 Clemson and then meeting No. 4 Arizona State, the Big 12 champion, which was ranked 12th overall by the committee and is scorching hot, having won six straight games, all by double figures.
Now the pressure is really on Penn State. Anything less than a semifinal berth would be a huge disappointment and only add further fan outcry. Remember, Penn State supporters were chanting for Franklin’s dismissal after that 20-13 loss to Ohio State on Nov. 2.
Franklin has never really won a big game since taking over in Happy Valley in 2014. He’s 1-10 against Ohio State, including eight straight losses, and 3-18 against Associated Press top-10 teams. He has done a lot of good at Penn State, leading the Nittany Lions to six 10-win seasons and four AP top-10 finishes. He mostly wins the games he’s supposed to, which matters. Alabama would’ve reached the playoff had it avoided killer defeats to one of unranked Vanderbilt or Oklahoma. The same can be said for Ole Miss and its home loss to Kentucky. Others can make similar claims.
Franklin deserves credit for that. Penn State is a top-10 mainstay under his watch. It produces pros and recruits well. But that fan base wants more. It wants championships. It wants this program to take the next step.
It has the chance to do that over the next few weeks. Really, there is no excuse for it not to. Beat SMU at home, then take down Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Eve. Penn State will be favored in both games. It is the better team. It has the better players.
That’s not to say these games should be routs. SMU’s two losses came by a combined six points to BYU and Clemson. Boise State has a future Sunday star in Heisman Trophy-contending running back Ashton Jeanty and played Oregon tough to open the season, losing by three on the road. A win over the Broncos would be just Franklin’s fourth win over an AP top-10 team. Boise State is ranked eighth and deserving of being there.
But this is nonetheless a golden opportunity for Franklin and Penn State, a chance to take the next step against very beatable opponents. The Nittany Lions were big winners on Sunday. Now, they have to go out and show they deserve their seed. It’s time Franklin wins a big game. He’s not going to find a better opportunity than this.
This is an easy tweak, one that should’ve been in place from the start of expansion. I wrote about it in early November. The top four seeds should go to the four best teams, not the four highest-ranked conference champions. No. 1 Oregon is going to get a tougher quarterfinal opponent in the No. 8 Ohio State/No. 9 Tennessee winner, then No. 5 Texas or No. 6 Penn State, as long as they advance past the first round. No. 3 Boise State (ranked ninth) and No. 4 Arizona State (ranked 12th) are inferior. The same can be said for No. 2 Georgia, the SEC champion who will likely face seventh-seeded Notre Dame.
I understand the idea of rewarding conference champions, but being included in the playoff is enough of a reward. Imagine the NCAA Tournament seeding based on conference champions rather than résumé. It would be ridiculous. So is this format. The four best teams deserve the easiest path to create the best possible matchups in the final rounds. That’s not happening now.
I really liked one thing the playoff committee did by not punishing teams for losing conference championship games. Texas and Penn State, who dropped heartbreakers in the SEC and Big Ten title games Saturday, respectively, each fell just one spot in the committee’s rankings. SMU, likewise, dropped only two spots, and wasn’t leapfrogged by Alabama for the final spot in the 12-team field, as some thought could be the case. The Mustangs lost the ACC title game to Clemson at the horn on a 56-yard field goal.
This was the right move. Qualifying for a championship game shouldn’t come with a punishment if you lose, especially if the game is so tightly contested as the aforementioned three were. A team that gets there shouldn’t lose ground to an idle one. You can argue about where the rankings stood before this weekend — Texas and Penn State both lacking major wins, and still being ranked in the top three felt like a mistake — but the conference championships were handled appropriately.