Where is Penn State in The Athletic's data-driven top 25?: Newsstand
Penn State news, notes, and updates for July 26 include a new data-driven top 25 that features the Lions, headlines of the day, and more. It’s time to dive into Friday’s top tweets and stories about head coach James Franklin’s team and college athletics.
Penn State tweets of the day
The Athletic’s Austin Mock, who models college football among other sports, has released his statistical-driven top 25 ahead of the 2024 college football season. It also includes each school’s chance of winning its conference. Before we dive into the numbers, we’ll offer a brief explainer on how it all works.
“I use play-by-play data to make a projection for each college football team,” Mock writes. “The projections are not only made up of box score statistics but also returning production, recruiting rankings and transfers. These projections aren’t who the model believes is most likely to win the national championship or make the playoff — more on those in the coming weeks — but instead an overall power ranking. Using the outputs of this model, I’ve built an algorithm to simulate every game of the season 100,000 times to get projected win totals as well as conference title odds for every college football team.”
Penn State checks in at No. 8. That’s consistent with numerous media top 25s. The model projects the Lions to win 9.5 games and gives them a 13.2-percent chance to win the Big Ten. Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon, Texas, Alabama, LSU, and Ole Miss all proceed PSU in that order. Mock gives the Buckeyes a 40-percent chance to win the conference and the Ducks a 31.6 percent shot.
Headlines of the day
Is Abdul Carter more valuable to Penn State at pass rusher or linebacker? Expect him to do both: Flounders, PennLive
Get to know Penn State’s top offensive targets in the Class of 2026: Snyder, BWI
Penn State to Face Stripe the Stadium, and a ‘Hornet’s Nest,’ at West Virginia: Wogenrich, SI
What questions do we still have for Penn State football following Big Ten Media Days?: Pickel, BWI
Julian Fleming has ‘turned into one of the leaders’ in the Penn State WR room: Alenstein, Daily Collegian
Top Penn State commit Max Granville will reclassify, join Nittany Lions for 2024 season: Fitz, BWI
As revenue sharing approaches, Big Ten schools evaluate budgets, modeling distribution: Nakos, On3
What went into Max Granville’s decision to reclassify and enroll at Penn State?: Snyder, BWI
Quote of the day
“For us, either way, we’re happy with it. There are some challenges that you have on special teams because you can only have one guy on the field at once with it. On special teams, you have a blend of people on the field, and you could have some changes throughout the game where you end up with two players on the field at the same time. So, you’ve got to be strategic about that. You’ve got to be careful,” Franklin said.
“But I think it’s a good rule change. I’m glad it happened, but I think the whole reason the rule got changed is because of the sign-stealing whole discussion and I don’t really feel like that resolves that whatsoever.”
—PSU coach James Franklin on new NCAA rules allowing in-helmet communication and iPads on sidelines.
