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Can Penn State still make College Football Playoff? What's next after Ohio State loss

craig meyer, usa today network
·5-min read

Penn State was handed what has become an agonizingly familiar setback Saturday, the kind of defeat that would potentially hurt more if it didn’t happen at such an alarming rate.

In their biggest game of the season, the Nittany Lions fell at home to Ohio State 20-13 in a matchup of top-five teams playing in front of a record-setting crowd of 111,030 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania.

The loss was Penn State’s eighth in a row to the Buckeyes and dropped coach James Franklin’s record against Ohio State to 1-10 since he took over as the program’s coach ahead of the 2014 season.

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Many of those eight consecutive losses came in games that ended up shaping the Big Ten and national title races, propelling the Buckeyes to conference championships and College Football Playoff appearances while preventing the Nittany Lions from reaching those goals.

What impact might No. 3 Penn State’s latest disappointment against No. 4 Ohio State have?

Here’s what you need to know about the Nittany Lions’ playoff chances:

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Can Penn State football make the College Football Playoff?

As gutting as Saturday’s loss may have felt for Penn State and its fans, the Nittany Lions very much remain in the hunt for a spot in the College Football Playoff.

The defeat was Penn State’s first of the season, making its record 7-1 with four games remaining in the regular season.

While losses in recent seasons to Ohio State made the Nittany Lions’ road to a four-team playoff much more difficult — if there even was a road at all — the expanded 12-team playoff features seven at-large berths for the highest-ranked teams that fail to win their conference championship. Had the 12-team format existed, Penn State would have made the playoff six times based on the final rankings of the playoff committee (and based on the criteria of who makes the 12-team playoff.) In each of those seasons, the Nittany Lions had at least one loss.

It's unclear how far they’ll fall following the loss to Ohio State. As 5 p.m. ET Saturday, none of the teams ranked behind Penn State in the US LBM Coaches Poll had lost, though several of those squads have two losses, which would make it seem unlikely that they’d leap the Nittany Lions.

Franklin and his team will get a good idea soon of where they sit. The first playoff committee rankings of the 2024 season will be released Tuesday night.

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Can Penn State earn first-round CFP bye?

Though the Nittany Lions’ playoff hopes remain intact, whatever aspirations it had to earn a first-round bye are now in a more precarious position.

The highest four seeds in the playoff avoid having to play a first-round game and advance directly to the quarterfinals. Those four spots, however, are reserved for the four highest-rated conference champions, which, in most years, will come from the Power Four conferences: the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12.

Penn State’s road to the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis is a bit complicated following the loss to the Buckeyes.

With the additions of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, the Big Ten scrapped its two-division model and instead gives spots in the conference championship game to the highest two finishers in the 18-team league. At 4-1, the Nittany Lions are one of four teams in the Big Ten standings with fewer than two losses in conference play, a group that also includes 5-0 Oregon, 5-0 Indiana and 4-1 Ohio State.

Ohio State and Indiana play on Nov. 23 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, meaning one of those teams will have at least one more loss by the end of the season. Beyond that, though, Oregon has a navigable remaining schedule, with no games against top-25 opponents.

Should Penn State find itself in a tie in the standings, here are the tiebreaker steps the Big Ten established heading into this season, in order:

  • The tied teams will be compared based on head-to-head matchups during the regular season.

  • The tied teams will be compared based on record against all common conference opponents.

  • The tied teams will be compared based on record against common opponents with the best conference record and proceeding through the common conference opponents based on their order of finish within the conference standings.

  • The tied teams will be compared based on the best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents.

  • The representative will be chosen based on the highest ranking by SportSource Analytics (team Rating Score metric) following the regular season.

  • The representative will be chosen by random draw among the tied teams conducted by the Commissioner or designee.

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Penn State football schedule 2024

Much of the optimistic case for Penn State making the playoff centers around its remaining schedule.

Following the loss to Ohio State, the Nittany Lions have no games remaining against teams in the top 25 of the Coaches Poll. In fact, that only tells so much of the story. Entering Saturday, only one of Penn State’s final four opponents — Minnesota, at 5-3 — had a winning record.

Should the Nittany Lions take care of business and win games in which they’ll almost certainly be favored, they’ll finish the regular season 11-1 and be in strong position to be selected for the playoff.

Here’s a look at Penn State’s 2024 schedule and what looms ahead:

  • Saturday, Aug. 31: Penn State 34, West Virginia 12

  • Saturday, Sept. 7: Penn State 34, Bowling Green 27

  • Saturday, Sept. 21: Penn State 56, Kent State 0

  • Saturday, Sept. 28: Penn State 21, No. 19 Illinois 7

  • Saturday, Oct. 5: Penn State 27, UCLA 11

  • Saturday, Oct. 12: Penn State 33, USC 30 (OT)

  • Saturday, Oct. 26: Penn State 28, Wisconsin 13

  • Saturday, Nov. 2: No. 4 Ohio State 20, Penn State 13

  • Saturday, Nov. 9: vs. Washington

  • Saturday, Nov. 16: at Purdue

  • Saturday, Nov. 23: at Minnesota

  • Saturday, Nov. 30: vs. Maryland

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Can Penn State still make CFP? What's next after Ohio State loss