Do the Nittany Lions Have Enough for a National Championship?

James Franklin was very adamant during his August 2 press conference that “no one cares about preseason rankings.” In fact, he said “I’m not going to frame the preseason rankings and put it in my basement in the man cave. No one cares. No one cares.”

It’s hard to argue that this Penn State football team has more hype around it than any James Franklin-coached team in State College, though.

The Nittany Lions are coming off of a season that took them to an appearance in the Big Ten championship game, their first two College Football Playoff wins in program history against SMU and Boise State, and down to the final drive against Notre Dame in the national semifinals, a crushing 27-24 loss.

Now, the core of the group has returned. Drew Allar decided to skip out on hearing his name in this past spring’s NFL Draft to develop another year in college, the running back tandem of Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen has returned, and some huge pieces like Nick Dawkins, Dani Dennis-Sutton, Zane Durant and Zakee Wheatley are back on the team to try and make a push to a National Championship in January.

If you want to see unfamiliar faces, look no further than the group of guys catching the ball on this Penn State team. Surely the Nittany Lions will get a lot of production out of transfer wideouts Trebor Pena and Kyron Hudson.

Pena is a Syracuse transfer who caught 84 passes for 941 yards and nine touchdowns last year in the ACC – some really valuable numbers coming in to State College.