Penn State’s 2025 season was supposed to begin with championship expectations and a loaded roster. Instead, it has spiraled into the kind of collapse that traces back to one night in January and never really let go.
On January 9, 2025, James Franklin’s Nittany Lions were in the College Football Playoff semifinal against Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl. Penn State grabbed control early behind a big first half from Nick Singleton and built a 10-0 lead in the second quarter.
But Notre Dame clawed back, and the defining image of the game became Jeremiyah Love’s “greatest two-yard run of all time” for a fourth-quarter touchdown. Even then, the game was tied with a minute left before Drew Allar threw an ill-advised interception to Christian Grey, setting up a Notre Dame game-winning field goal.
That loss was crushing on its own. What followed for Penn State has been worse.
The Nittany Lions entered 2025 with plenty back from that 2024 team, including Allar and the backfield duo of Singleton and Kaytron Allen. After a run that had many people picking Penn State to win the national title, the season opened cleanly with three non-conference wins. Then came Oregon.
Penn State pushed the Ducks to the edge and lost 30-24 in double overtime when Allar threw a walk-off interception. From there, everything unraveled.
The Nittany Lions dropped six straight after their 3-0 start and fell to 3-6 overall. Some of those defeats made more sense than others - Oregon, Ohio State and Indiana were all understandable losses - but falling to UCLA and Northwestern was not.
Those defeats led to the firing of James Franklin.
Penn State’s problem after that was time, or more specifically, the lack of it. Firing a coach in the middle of the season is supposed to give a program a jump on the next hire.
Penn State did not get that edge. By the time the Nittany Lions made their move, Lane Kiffin, Jon Sumrall, Bob Chesney and Collin Klein had already been hired elsewhere.
Franklin himself was even hired at Virginia Tech before Penn State had settled on its next coach.
Eventually, 58 days after Franklin was fired, Penn State introduced Iowa State’s Matt Campbell as the replacement.
That delay mattered because the modern college football calendar runs through the transfer portal, and Penn State was late to the table. Campbell arrived behind other schools in the player market, and the splashiest additions never came. His biggest haul was bringing over a large chunk of his own Iowa State roster, including 24 Cyclones and quarterback Rocco Becht.
That group had gone 8-4 in the Big 12. It has not looked built for the Big Ten.
Penn State still opened the season 3-0 and carried preseason top-25 expectations, but the league has exposed the mismatch. Wisconsin came into Happy Valley and left with a win after a second-half comeback. Northwestern followed with a 34-13 rout, leaning on Chip Kelly’s Wing T and leaving Penn State staring at an 0-2 start in conference play.
Now USC comes to town, and another 0-3 start in Big Ten play is very much in play. The picture is ugly either way: a 2025 season that started with national championship dreams ended in the Pinstripe Bowl, and a 2026 season that was supposed to mark a fresh beginning is already sitting at the bottom of the Big Ten standings.
For Penn State, the slide keeps pointing back to Notre Dame.
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