James Franklin addresses Penn State's lack of signature wins

Penn State is 7-2 and seemingly headed toward a 10-plus win season yet again under head coach James Franklin — the fourth in nine seasons for him at State College. After going 11-11 across the prior two seasons, it looks like the Nittany Lions are back to being consistent winners.

That consistency is something Franklin wants to make a mainstay, but while also securing some signature wins — something Penn State has lacked this season. While the Big Ten East provides ample opportunity with Michigan and Ohio State, the Nittany Lions faltered in both those games this year. A road trip to Auburn was a success, but Auburn isn’t. There just isn’t much special about the seven teams Penn State has beat.

“Obviously there’s value in it,” Franklin said of a signature win. “It’s interesting because you’ve got some teams and some programs that have not been consistent, but have big time wins. And then you have others that have been consistent but not the signature win.

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“Obviously what you want is you want both. You want the consistency week in and week out, which I think we’ve all seen is hard to do. And the signature wins are hard to do. And what you kind of do is try to do both. That’s what the best programs in college football are able to do — I don’t know if I would necessarily say consistently. But yes, that’s what the best programs in college football are attempting to do.”

Outside of Michigan and Ohio State, Penn State plays Michigan State, Maryland, Rutgers and Indiana every year in the Big Ten East. Michigan State can occasionally be humming and present a real challenge, but beyond the Spartans, Buckeyes and Wolverines, the east doesn’t usually generate marquee games.

The two crossover opponents from the Big Ten West can vary widely — some years a team can draw Iowa and Wisconsin when they’re humming; others, like this year for Penn State, a team gets Purdue and Minnesota.

Both of those teams were contenders in the West, but the Nittany Lions opened the season at Purdue and hosted a Minnesota team that didn’t have its starting quarterback.

And the Auburn home-and-home series delivered a solid matchup and win in 2021, the game on The Plains this year underwhelmed. Penn State won handily and Auburn went on to fire Bryan Harsin a few months later.

But that’s nothing Franklin can control once the season comes. All he can do is get his team ready to win the next game, signature victory or not.

“Most importantly, we gotta be 1-0 this week or people will be complaining about the other part of it, too. We gotta do what we gotta do this week to be 1-0, continue to stack wins and stack days and be positive, give you guys positive things to write about, and then hopefully at the end of the season we’re where we need to be and put ourself in the best position possibly for the bowl season as well as momentum going in to next season,” Franklin said. “But yeah, I think, obviously, you want both.”