More Mountains? More Molehills? Still Unclear How Conference Expansion Will Shift Penn State’s Path to The Promised Land

Since the end of the 2021 season, two things have been true about Penn State football.

The first is that the Nittany Lions have been steadily improving as a program. The second is that they’ve been at least a step behind the two major programs in their conference.

With several traditional Pac 12 powers rotating into the Big Ten and onto Penn State’s schedule this fall, and Michigan (at least temporarily) rotating off of it, it is worth examining whether there will be more teams standing between the Lions and a playoff during the next few seasons or if the influx of new teams could disrupt the balance of power in the conference.

USC, which hosts Penn State on Oct. 12, lost five games with the nation’s top quarterback at the helm in 2023. UCLA, which visits Beaver Stadium on Oct. 5, fired Chip Kelly after six seasons in which the Bruins lost at least four games. Washington, which comes to State College on Nov. 9, is coming off its best season in years but lost both head coach Kalen DeBoer and quarterback Michael Penix Jr. Oregon, which isn’t on the Lions’ schedule this fall, is coming off a 12-2 season, though it must replace quarterback Bo Nix.

All of these programs have a solid pedigree and demonstrated willingness to invest in the sport, which arguably means more than pedigree in the era of NIL and the transfer portal. Of the four, USC and Oregon seem to have the combination of coaching chops and recent recruiting momentum to make the greatest impact on the Big Ten.

But are any of them in the class of Michigan and Ohio State? Or, better phrased for this audience, are any destined to be another Big Ten peer that stays constantly ahead of Penn State?

Only 12 FBS programs have won more games over the past 10 seasons than Penn State, which has 88 victories in that span despite the aforementioned hairball seasons of 2020 and 2021. Ohio State (115 wins) and Michigan (94) are on that list, as is Oregon (90), with Washington (87) just behind. USC is further down, at 79 wins.

The Nittany Lions have also been trending in the right direction. In both 2022 and 2023, they ranked among the top six in the nation in Football Power Index, which is ESPN’s way of measuring the true strength of a program and factors in things like recruiting ranking, returning starters and past performance and is updated throughout the season. It’s a sign that, however tired some Penn State fans may be of good but not great seasons, their favorite team has been closer to elite than the vast majority of non-elite programs, and with the Wolverines facing an uncertain future without Jim Harbaugh and Ohio State reeling a bit from dominating the regular season before being dominated by Harbaugh the past two seasons, Penn State might be ready to finally open the door it’s been smashing its head against for essentially the entirety of James Franklin’s tenure.

Of course, if the Nittany Lions make it a regular habit of stumbling against Oregon, USC and Washington, going through that door won’t mean much. But it stands to reason that those programs will have at least as much difficulty adjusting to the top teams in the Big Ten as those Big Ten teams will adjusting to them (It is also quite probable that the Big Ten and SEC will continue to siphon teams, money, and power away from conferences who aren’t the Big Ten and SEC, which over time will create less parity overall in college football but more in those conferences specifically).

The addition of those teams to the conference should help Penn State’s annual playoff resume and also steel the Lions for the biggest games on the schedule better than midseason games against the likes of Indiana or Rutgers. More importantly, it’ll give them some relief from the annual one-two punch of Buckeyes and Wolverines. If that’s a door the Lions can’t kick down, perhaps the conference’s new arrivals will allow them to bypass that door altogether and still arrive at their desired destination.