Career-defining year for James Franklin: Why Penn State coach is set up to change narrative in 2025 season

The 2025 college football season is a massive one for the Penn State team, but it’s also a career-defining season for Nittany Lions coach James Franklin.

Franklin is preparing for his 13th season at Penn State, and it’s easy to argue he’s coming off his greatest season with the program. While Penn State didn’t win the Big Ten, it did reach the conference title game and, more importantly in this era of college football, earned a College Football Playoff bid for the first time. It even won two CFP games before being dismissed by Notre Dame in the semifinals.

But, even that postseason success comes chock-full of the typical James Franklin skepticism.

Franklin’s tenure with Penn State has been unquestionably successful. He’s gone 101-42, and he’s routinely ranked amongst the top-10 coaches in the country in CBS Sports’ annual coach rankings for a reason. He’s also had his name attached to other high-profile job openings throughout his tenure — a testament to the fact other schools admire the work he’s done in Happy Valley, too. He’s won a Big Ten title, been to two Rose Bowls and three other New Year’s Six bowls in addition to last year’s playoff appearance. He’s recruited well and sent a host of players to the NFL.

But, for all those accomplishments, it’s what Franklin hasn’t done that typically grabs the public’s attention.

His 1-14 record against top-five teams is so widely known that it’s become a meme at this point — easy fodder for social media managers across the globe, guaranteed to get engagement. While Franklin has gone 64-33 overall in Big Ten play, that includes a mark of 4-16 against Ohio State and Michigan, Penn State’s primary foes for conference supremacy.

While he’s won a Big Ten title (2016) and played for another last season, Franklin’s Penn State teams have never gotten through a conference season unscathed, nor have they ever finished a season with fewer than two losses.

Franklin won two playoff games last year but did so against SMU and Boise State, two programs who had both been Group of Five schools until last season and would’ve been the Nos. 9 and 10 seeds had the CFP used straight seeding.

Now comes a new season that provides Franklin the opportunity to bury the narrative that he’s a good coach but doesn’t belong in the same tier as the sport’s best. Expectations are never low for Penn State football, but they’re very high in 2025.

Will James Franklin, Penn State rise to the challenge?

There are so many factors working in Penn State’s favor that you get the sense of a perfect storm. In a season that will see Ohio State, Michigan and Oregon breaking in new quarterbacks, as well as replacing top talent on both sides of the line of scrimmage, Penn State returns nearly intact from last season’s playoff run. Abdul Carter is gone, but Drew Allar will be back for his third season as the starting quarterback. The dynamic duo of Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen, both of whom rushed for over 1,000 yards last season, return as well. The universal remote of a tight end, Tyler Warren, is gone, but the Nittany Lions have brought in a trio of receivers via the portal with Kyron Hudson, Devonte Ross and Trebor Peña.

The schedule works to Penn State’s advantage as well. Yes, it includes Oregon and Ohio State, but while the Buckeyes will be on the road, the Ducks must come to Beaver Stadium to play at night during Penn State’s famed White Out. Penn State’s win total for the season is set at 10.5, according to DraftKings Sportsbook, an accurate reflection of logical expectations considering who’s back and who is on the schedule.

Should Penn State split the two games against Oregon and Ohio State and do what it typically does against everybody else, it’s looking at an 11-1 season and a trip to another Big Ten title game as well as the College Football Playoff. Should the Nittany Lions win both, it helps get the Ohio State monkey off Franklin’s back and possibly propels them to another deep postseason run.

But what if they don’t? What if Penn State loses those two Big Games and drops a third — perhaps on the road against Iowa before the Ohio State game or on the road at UCLA after the Oregon battle? What if that third loss keeps Penn State out of the College Football Playoff?

What happens to Franklin at that point? If the 2025 season seems set up for Penn State to succeed, but the Nittany Lions once again come up short, how is Franklin viewed from that point on?

He’s a coach who got the Penn State job because he showed he could punch above his weight while at Vanderbilt, leading the Commodores to 18 wins in his final two seasons there. However, at Penn State, Franklin has yet to consistently display the ability to do so.

Failure to do so in 2025 would likely cement that opinion for good.