The Penn State Line

With the Semi-Finals of the 2024 season wrapping up. We have just watched Penn State lose to Notre Dame 27-24 in the Orange Bowl. The game was and is a classic with many ups and downs. But as we look over the season and seasons prior for Penn State. They have been constantly at the edge of a good team that could be great. Continually, for the past 4 years, Penn State has had to play Michigan and Ohio State teams and loss, which have been powerful playoff teams. This year, they had a great draw, only having to play Ohio State as their biggest match-up in the regular season, which led them to be 11 and 1 and in the Big Ten Championship. They still had to play a great team in Oregon who came out and beat Penn State. Now, for the playoffs, they overhyped Penn State, saying their draw was so easy they might just win the thing. Which they could have the draw was SMU, a team that has gotten lucky multiple times in bad games and multiple games with turnover problems. SMU also had lower-level talent compared to Penn State. Next, they had Boise State, a team with a Great Running back but still lower-level talent compared to Penn State by a wide margin.

Now, with the expanded playoffs, Penn State has been given the opportunity to get in the playoffs, and a lot of talk from the media is Penn State is that getting the chance of a lifetime to do something they would have never gotten to in the 4 team playoff which is to win or play in the national championship. I believe there is a line between the good teams, the 8 -10 win teams, and the usual great teams, the 11-12 win teams, and that is the Penn State Line.

This is where I have teams compared to the Penn State Line

To define the term Great Teams means usually have a high recruiting class near the top 10, consistently win around 10.5 games, and compete in the higher part of your conference, usually the top 3. Good Teams are defined as teams who consistently win 8-10 wins, recruit at a top 15 or lower, and are always outside looking in at the conference championship. I am not saying good teams can not beat Great teams, but usually, the great teams lose to the other great teams.

The reason it is the Penn State Line is that no teams under that line are going to beat Penn State, no matter how good the teams under that line are, Penn State will win that game. For example, USC (7-6) lost to Penn State in overtime. There are exceptions to the rule Boise State this year (11-1) did lose to Penn State. Now, no one is saying that Boise State was in the definition of a great team, but they went 11-1, which is hard to do in the NCAA.

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