James Franklin states 128 teams would 'give their right arm' for Penn State's season

Four teams earned the right to play college football during the second week on January, and Penn State was one of them.

That fact isn’t lost on Penn State head coach James Franklin, whose team made its first College Football Playoff this season. They won two games before falling to Notre Dame on a last-minute field goal in the national semifinal. In defeat, Franklin doesn’t want his team forgetting what got them there.

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“The sun will come up tomorrow, and the one thing I want to make sure that all those guys do is walk out of that locker room with their heads high and their chests out because they have a ton to be proud of,” Franklin said.

“There’s about 128 teams that would give their right arm to have the season that we just had this year. It doesn’t feel that way right now, but there’s a ton to be proud of.”

Penn State finishes the 2024-25 campaign 13-3 as the Fiesta Bowl champions and Big Ten runners-up. No team in State College has ever won 13 games in a single season and were undefeated (5-0) in true road games this year after ending the regular season 11-1 (8-1, Big Ten).

In the end, Franklin and his squad finished just shy of playing in the national championship game, which would have been a rematch against the only team that defeated them in the regular season, Ohio State.

“I wanted it for the guys. I wanted it for our players. I wanted it for the staff,” Franklin said of playing in the national title game. “I wanted it for Pat Kraft and Neeli Bendapudi who have been awesome, and I’ve been doing this long enough to know when we have the support from our athletic director and president. That’s been phenomenal, so I wanted it for them.

“But most importantly, I wanted it for the guys in the locker room and the staff. As you can imagine, there’s a thousand different emotions going on and feelings, but as the head coach, I’ve got to put on the right face for the guys in the locker room for what they need right now and for my family.”