On Tuesday night, in the fourth College Football Playoff rankings reveal of the 2024 season, Penn State stayed put at No. 4. At 10-1 and heading into a matchup with Maryland in the final week of the regular season, the Nittany Lions are likely to host a first-round game in the new 12-team CFP at Beaver Stadium as long as Ohio State keeps them out of the Big Ten title game.
With an undefeated record and only Washington left on the schedule in Week 14, Oregon has clinched a spot in the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis, but the other spot is still up for grabs. If Ohio State, Penn State, and Indiana all finish at 7-1 in conference play, the Buckeyes will get in with head-to-head wins over both the Nittany Lions and Hoosiers. However, if Ohio State slips up in Week 14 against Michigan, James Franklin’s team would claim the spot based on tiebreakers with IU. While entry into that game would offer a chance to win the conference for the first time since 2016 and ensure a first-round bye in the CFP, it could be the worst thing that could happen to Penn State this week.
Penn State has not moved in the CFP rankings since debuting at No. 4, and regardless of what happens in Week 14, if the Nittany Lions beat 4-7 Maryland, they’re in. The top four seeds go to the four-highest-ranked conference champions, so that could allow for some shuffling if Georgia beats Texas or Texas A&M in Atlanta in two weeks it would jump from its current ranking at No. 6 to a top-four spot and likely leave the Longhorns in front of Penn State.
Still, there aren’t enough conference championship scenarios for Penn State to slide past the No. 7 seed, which means a home playoff game. The only scenario that could drop James Franklin’s team out of hosting in Round 1, is losing to Oregon in Indianapolis.
The committee will be hesitant to punish teams that lose their conference title games because it won’t make the conferences happy if their contending teams don’t want to play in their yearly money-grab for fear of taking another loss.
Still, Penn State does not have many impressive wins on its resume, beating now No. 23 Illinois, which nearly lost to Rutgers on Saturday, is probably its most impressive one. Instead, the Nittany Lions have been buoyed by their loss, a one-score defeat at the hands of No. 2 Ohio State. That works when you have one loss, if they start to add up, arguing about good losses starts to feel hollow.
The Buckeyes didn’t allow Penn State to score an offensive touchdown. If it weren’t for a Will Howard pick-six and a fumble out of the end zone for a touchback from the Ohio State quarterback, then it could have gotten ugly in Happy Valley. It’d be hard to feel confident that Penn State would fare any better against Oregon, the only team that beat the Buckeyes this season.
In that scenario, two-loss Penn State could get sent on the road in the first round, or fall out entirely. Yes, Ohio State losing to Michigan would give Penn State a chance to win a Big Ten title, but it also introduces the risk of falling out of the CFP picture or at least well past the No. 7 seed with a home playoff game. That may not be a risk that James Franklin wants to take with a team that narrowly escaped a road game at unranked Minnesota.