The Athletic's Stewart Mandel is a preseason Penn State believer, placing the Nittany Lions atop his too-early top 25 for 2025. "I'm skeptical they can actually pull it off," Mandel writes, "but on paper, James Franklin's team deserves that status given how many players are returning."

But these days, it takes the GDP of a small country to keep a roster intact in college football. Ohio State spent the money to do it in 2024. Penn State is trying to do it in 2025. The Nittany Lions,

Sports ranked Penn State as the No. 4 team for next fall. The Nittany Lions were ranked behind newly crowned champions Ohio State, Texas and Alabama. The returning trio of Drew Allar, Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen seems to make a strong case that Penn State should be viewed as a team within college football’s upper echelon.

Penn State received 1,203 points in the final AP Top 25 poll, just eight behind Texas for fourth. Ohio State was No. 1, followed by Notre Dame and Oregon. Penn State has finished in the AP top 10 five times in James Franklin's 11 seasons as head coach. Franklin's teams have seven top-20 finishes since 2016.