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Penn State Ascends to its Highest Place Ever in College Football Playoff Rankings

The Nittany Lions are No. 3 in the CFP rankings as they prepare to face No. 1 Oregon in the Big Ten title game.

Mark Wogenrich

Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin claps from the sideline during the second quarter against the Maryland Terrapins at Beaver Stadium. Penn State won 44-7.
Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin claps from the sideline during the second quarter against the Maryland Terrapins at Beaver Stadium. Penn State won 44-7. / Matthew O'Haren-Imagn Images
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Penn State moved up its highest spot ever in the College Football Playoff rankings, reaching No. 3 after completing its first 11-win regular season under head coach James Franklin. The penultimate set of rankings created a top-3 matchup in the 2024 Big Ten Championship Game between No. 3 Penn State and No. 1 Oregon.

Qualfying for the Big Ten title game should secure Penn State a first-round home game, and likely the 5th or 6th seed, if it loses to Oregon. That's something CFP selection committee chair Warde Manuel referred to Tuesday night and something Frankin obliquely lobbied for this week.

On a Big Ten conference call Sunday, Franklin challenged the CFP selection committee to make sure that Saturday's conference title games don't radically alter the course of a team's playoff future.

“I think everybody recognizes that we want to make sure that these [conference championship] games do not become a penalty,” Franklin said. "I think there’s been a lot of conversation about that. And there’s a bunch of really good football people that are on the committee that I think understand that.

Penn State (11-1) is playing in the Big Ten title game for the first time since 2016, when it beat Wisconsin but did not receive a bid to the four-team playoff. This time, Penn State is guaranteed a spot in the field win or lose Saturday. The question will be seeding.

If Penn State beats Oregon, it would earn the first or second overall playoff seed and a first-round bye. Penn State would start its playoff road in the quarterfinals, likely Jan. 1 in the Rose Bowl. If it loses to Oregon, Penn State still would earn a first-round home playoff game based on comments Tuesday by Warde Manuel, chair of the CFP selection committee.

Manuel has said that qualifying for a conference championship game is "a really valuable data point." On the ESPN rankings show Tuesday, Manuel said that teams not playing in this weekend's conference championship games are unlikely to be adjusted.

"Those who are not playing, we will not adjust those teams because they don't have another data point, obviously," Manuel said an interview with ESPN's Rece Davis when asked about Alabama (No. 11), Miami (12), Ole Miss (13) and South Carolina (14). In this week's rankings, Alabama would be the last at-large team.

This is instructive for Penn State, which remained ahead of Notre Dame (11-1) in the latest rankings. Manuel did not address the Penn State-Notre Dame situation specifically, or whether the Irish could leap Penn State if it loses to Oregon, but did address a comparison of other teams.

"If you take, for example, Tennessee is ahead of SMU, Indiana is behind SMU; Tennessee will not drop below Indiana at any point. Neither team is playing," Manuel said on a conference call. "But SMU could move up, depending on how we evaluate the game. They could stay where they are or they could move down depending on the outcome of the game. But Tennessee and Indiana in this example would never flip. Indiana would never move ahead of Tennessee and Tennessee would never drop below Indiana because we've already evaluated them. There's not another datapoint because they're not playing in the championship games. So we don't have anything else to add to the evaluation of those teams, so we can't move them above or below each other."

So could Notre Dame leap Penn State if the Nittany Lions lose big to Oregon? It seems unlikely based on Manuel's comments, though he added that the committee still must evaluate the conference championship games.

"We have great respect for the teams that make their championship games, and we give them a lot of credit for what they've done throughout the season," Manuel said. "But we've been asked by the commissioners to rank the top 25 through the end of the championship weekend, and so we have an obligation to take a look at those datapoints and the outcomes of those games in order to rank the final top 25, and that's what they've asked us to do since the inception, and that's what we'll do this weekend once all the games are played."

Franklin sought to underscore his point about fairness on the Big Ten call Sunday.

“I think everybody has the same goal in mind, doing what’s best for college football and the student-athletes, and getting the best 12 teams in the game and trying to set it up in a way that you earn ... where you’re seeded throughout the entire season and the collective body of work. So we’ll see how that plays out," Franklin said. "What I do know is, no matter what happens and whatever is decided, some people won’t be happy about it.”

Penn State meets Oregon in the Big Ten title game Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Kickoff is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET on CBS.

Here's a look at this week's projected bracket, courtesy of ESPN. This is merely a projected bracket based on the current rankings. Arizona State is Penn State's fifth different projected playoff opponent with Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Georgia and Indiana.

More Penn State Football

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Two Penn State assistants pitched as candidates for West Virginia job

The Oregon Ducks scout Penn State ahead of the Big Ten title game

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Mark Wogenrich
MARK WOGENRICH

Mark Wogenrich is Editor and Publisher of AllPennState, the site for Penn State news on SI's FanNation Network. He has covered Penn State sports for more than two decades across three coaching staffs and three Rose Bowls.

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