Penn State’s roster makeover showed up loud and clear in 247Sports’ latest Team Talent Composite.
A year ago, the Nittany Lions were sitting near the top of the national conversation. They entered the 2025 season with championship expectations and a roster that 247Sports viewed as one of the country’s most talented, slotting Penn State at No. 9 before it settled at No. 10 in the Team Talent Composite.
That didn’t translate on the field. Penn State’s 2025 season turned into a year of sweeping change, with the program moving on from James Franklin, bringing in Matt Campbell and reshaping the roster in the process.
The updated 2026 Team Talent Composite, released Thursday, reflects just how much has changed. Penn State dropped 12 spots to No. 22 with 776.44 points, a notable slide that fits a roster rebuilt in short order under Campbell.
247Sports national college football reporter Chris Hummer said the number says as much about timing and roster turnover as it does about the new coach.
"It's not really Matt Campbell's fault. It's hard to put a quality recruiting class together in just a few weeks, and James Franklin did take a lot of the high-level talent on the roster with him to Blacksburg," 247Sports national college football reporter Chris Hummer writes. "And while Penn State did add high-quality pieces via the transfer portal, many of them were former Iowa State recruits, which means they won't rank highly in the Team Talent Composite formula."
The metric itself is built around high school recruiting ratings, along with incoming players, portal additions and departures. Hummer also noted two important wrinkles in how the 2026 version is being calculated.
First, 247Sports is using its own rankings for the first time rather than the industry-generated 247Sports Composite. Second, the formula still starts with a player’s high school ranking.
"The Team Talent Composite rankings do not factor in a player's transfer grade, only how a player ranked as a high school recruit," Hummer writes. "That's a big issue.
It doesn't reflect a player's career trajectory once they leave high school. We're working on it.
But the Team Talent Composite still remains a useful metric as a sweeping look at rosters."
Even with those limitations, the ranking has historically tracked closely with championship-level teams. Since the metric began in 2015, every national champion has finished in the top 15 except for Indiana, which entered last season at No. 72.
At the top of the 2026 rankings, Georgia leads the way at No. 1, followed by Oregon, Alabama, Texas and Ohio State. The rest of the top 10 includes Notre Dame, Texas A&M, LSU, USC and Michigan.
Penn State’s 2026 schedule also features a long list of teams inside the rankings. The Nittany Lions will play No.
10 Michigan, No. 9 USC, No.
21 Washington, No. 27 Wisconsin, No.
36 Minnesota, No. 49 Rutgers, No.
50 Purdue, No. 51 Maryland, No.
58 Northwestern, No. 86 Temple, No.
100 Marshall and No. 120 Buffalo.
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