On Monday, Heather Dinich of ESPN reported that ESPN and the College Football Playoff reached a five-year, $1.7 billion deal to expand the CFP to 24 teams, which was quickly followed by statements from all of the Power 4 conferences announcing the end of their respective conference championship games.
For the Big Ten, that ends a 16-year run after the inaugural Big Ten title game in 2011, when Russell Wilson and Wisconsin took down Kirk Cousins and Michigan State. For Penn State, needless to say, 2011 was a tumultuous time; the final year of Joe Paterno’s tenure, as the program fell under heavy sanctions related to the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
At that point, it was hard to imagine Penn State playing in a Big Ten Championship Game, let alone doing it just five years later. Yet, behind an upstart coach who came from Vanderbilt, a three-star quarterback from Virginia, and one of the best running backs in college football history, Penn State won its lone Big Ten Championship Game in 2016, erasing a 21-point deficit to beat Wisconsin 38-31.
Game 6/221
— Cruz Oxenreider (@TheRealCruzOx) January 25, 2026
#7 Penn State vs #6 Wisconsin
Big Ten Championship Game
December 3rd, 2016pic.twitter.com/9uUAdpBfD7
Despite the win, that 2016 team got left out of the then four-team College Football Playoff in favor of Ohio State, which it had beaten memorably on the block-six at Beaver Stadium, and ultimately lost a fantastically entertaining Rose Bowl to Sam Darnold and USC.
While it didn’t achieve any of the goals that come after a conference title, the program’s first since 1994, that 2016 doesn’t loom any less large in the collective memory of Penn State fans or feel any less special in the heart of this one.
The 2016 Penn State team was a special fandom experience
I ultimately didn’t attend Penn State, but back in the fall of 2016, as a sophomore in high school, I had no idea that would be the case. I just knew that the school my Dad attended and my older sister was about to enroll in was always the one I rooted for on Saturdays in the fall. And in Western Pennsylvania in 2016, that became especially important with Pitt back on the schedule for the first time in my life.
It also felt especially bad when Pitt won that 2016 game in early September, 42-39, and I had to hear about it from family and friends from the other side of the in-state rivalry for the first time. Still, that was a crystallizing moment of my Penn State fandom, as a painful loss can sometimes be, and boy, did I lock in at the right time.
To this day, even as that Pitt loss and a blowout defeat in Ann Arbor a few weeks later kept Penn State out of the CFP, that 2016 team is my favorite team in any sport that I’ve ever rooted for. It was Saquon Barkley’s true arrival as a transcendent star, and it was a diminutive quarterback who was the personification of moxie, chucking deep balls to Mike Gesicki and Chris Godwin, who seemingly turned every 50/50 ball into a 90/10 proposition, and hitting his home run swing celebration afterwards.
It was a team that refused to die, whether it was after that Michigan loss that would have broken most teams, or trailing No. 2 Ohio State 21-7 entering the fourth quarter. And that all came together on one unforgettable day in Indianapolis.
The 2016 Big Ten Championship Game was the peak of the James Franklin era
2016 was supposed to be the beginning, and in some ways it was. But it was also probably the best it ever got, and if we had know that in the moment, maybe we could have soaked it in even more.
Down 28-7 in the second quarter against one of the best ball-control teams in the country, with a great run game and an elite pass rush led by TJ Watt, Trace McSorley fumbled a snap that was recovered by the Badgers at the Penn State 43-yard line. That should have been the end of the dream season.
Instead, the Nittany Lions forced a three-and-out just before the two-minute warning and woke up. Their next six drives:
- 8 plays, 90 yards, TD
- 1 play, 70 yards, TD
- 8 plays, 63 yards, TD
- 4 plays, 81 yards, TD
- 9 plays, 58 yards, FG
- 4 plays, -19 yards, Ballgame
It was quick strikes to Saeed Blacknall, huge plays from DaeSean Hamilton, and tough running from Barkley. It was that entire season distilled down into 60 beautiful minutes and a program forging a new, fresh, exciting identity after the darkest times imaginable.
It was both exhilarating and cathartic. And it’s still right there with the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates as the dearest teams to my heart. It wasn’t just about what the team meant for the program; getting back on the national stage after the most disgraceful scandal imaginable, for a 15-year-old, that team was also just cool and exciting.
In 2024, James Franklin, with a very different perception and relationship to the fanbase, led a very different team back to Indianapolis. While the game against Oregon was nearly as exciting, all the optimism of 2016 was replaced by dread, knowing that somehow, a coach who, nearly a decade earlier, led the team that wouldn’t die, would find a way to do just that.
In hindsight, that 2016 team, in his third year at the helm, was the peak of the James Franklin era. Not just the best team, but the moment in time that held the most hope for what could be. Unfortunately, it never was, and now, there won’t be another Big Ten Championship Game for Franklin’s replacement, Matt Campbell, to bring the program back to. But at least for me, who never saw the heights of the Paterno era in the ‘80s, I’ll always have 2016.
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