Where is Penn State in the first SP+ rankings of the 2025 season?
Fresh off a trip to the College Football Playoff semifinals and a fifth place finish in the final Associated Press top 25 of the 2024 season, Penn State has a top-five spot in the first SP+ ranking from ESPN’s Bill Connelly for the 2025 season. The data guru’s model has long liked the Lions, especially during the James Franklin era in State College.
Connelly’s metrics combine recent recruiting, history, and returning production to, as he writes, create a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking. Along those same lines, these projections aren’t intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the season. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather.”
Penn State checks in at No. 3. Ohio State and Alabama are ahead of it in that order. And Georgia and Notre Dame round out the top five. Other opponents besides the Buckeyes, who are on the Lions’ 2025 schedule and are also in the early SP+ top 25, include No. 6 Oregon, No. 21 Iowa, and No. 24 Indiana.
Connelly’s metrics rank the Lions as the No. 4 offense, the No. 7 defense, and the No. 58 special teams. Andy Kotelnicki returns for his second season at the head of the Lions’ attack. Justin Lustig does the same for the special teams. And, Jim Knowles was pried away from Ohio State to replace Tom Allen as the leader of the Penn State defense.
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Where is Penn State in other early top 25s?
Back in January, Bill Bender of The Sporting News put together a composite ranking of the early top 25s across the media industry. Penn State checks in at No. 3. It has a high of No. 1 (via The Athletic) and a low of No. 5 (via CBS Sports).
“Franklin’s inability to beat elite foes is well-documented. But he’ll really have no excuses in 2025,” Mandel writes in explaining his decision to put the Lions atop his list. “Nearly all of Penn State’s best NFL prospects return, most notably Allar and 1,000-yard rushers Singleton and Allen. Though defensive coordinator Tom Allen departed for Clemson, the unit he left behind is loaded. That’s good because Oregon comes to Happy Valley on Sept. 27, and Penn State plays at Ohio State on Nov. 1.”
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