The Athletic's Stewart Mandel is a preseason Penn State believer, placing the Nittany Lions atop his too-early top 25 for 2025. "I'm skeptical they can actually pull it off," Mandel writes, "but on paper, James Franklin's team deserves that status given how many players are returning."

Now that it’s all over and the Ohio State Buckeyes are the college football national champions, it can be definitively said: Expanding the College Football Playoff worked.

The Nittany Lions ended in the top five for the first time since 2005. It’s the first time the Big Ten has had three teams in the final top five. Ohio State was No. 1 and Oregon was No. 3.