The No. 1 Oregon Ducks, playing in their first Big Ten season, won the conference title on Saturday night by defeating No. 3 Penn State, 45-37.
It should guarantee the No. 1 seed for the Ducks in the College Football Playoff and send them into the tournament with a perfect 13-0 record.
They will be the odds-on favorites to win the whole thing.
It is not as rosy of a picture for Penn State.
Not only does the loss keep the Nittany Lions from a Big Ten championship, but it will also prevent them from getting a top-four seed and a bye week into the quarterfinals. They are almost certainly going to get a home playoff game in the first round (which is an excellent consolation prize to a bye week) and perhaps even a game where they will be heavy favorites.
That is the good news.
The bad news is Penn State and head coach James Franklin had another opportunity to win a big game against an elite opponent and perhaps change the narrative around their program.
They fell short again.
With Saturday’s loss, Franklin is now just 3-19 vs. top-10 opponents at Penn State and still can not get over the hump against top-tier competition.
It is a problem for Penn State’s national championship hopes because these are the teams you have to beat if you want to play at that level and win a title. Franklin and Penn State have emphatically proven that they are capable of beating pretty much every team on their schedule and almost all of the Big Ten. But that goes away as soon as they play Ohio State, Michigan and pretty much any other top-10 team.
There is a lot to be said for being a consistent top-10 program that can win 11 games every year. There are probably 120 programs (or more) in FBS that would love to be in Penn State’s situation every year.
But Penn State fans are also probably getting frustrated with getting so close and then not being able to finish the job.
Still, Saturday’s game did seem like it was a little different than some of the other losses in these types of games.
For one, James Franklin did not coach conservatively. He turned the offense loose, went for two down by 14 points in the fourth quarter, and they hung in with the top team in the country while never giving up after falling 28-10 in the first half. Granted, Penn State did look overmatched and unprepared for prime time in the early going, but there is a lot to be said for the pushback.
Maybe that can be something to build on for the playoffs. Maybe it can set the stage for Penn State to know it can compete with these teams and make a run. A lot of it will depend on the seeding and the matchups, but eventually, Penn State is going to have to beat an Oregon, an Ohio State, a Georgia or a Texas type of team to get to where it wants to be.
So far, it has not done that, even if it does seem to be getting closer on the scoreboard.
