Week 1 of college football is upon us and there will be some big matchups:
No. 1 Texas at No. 3 Ohio State. No. 6 Notre Dame at No. 10 Miami (Fla.). No. 9 LSU at No. 4 Clemson. No. 8 Alabama at Florida State. Brent Pry’s Virginia Tech squad at No. 13 South Carolina.
And…Penn State vs. Nevada, ranked No. 122 out of 136 teams in ESPN’s preseason SP+ Index of major college football teams? Hmmm, it’s more like Weak One. (But we now know the Beaver Stadium temporary bleachers are strong.)
Penn State will still be tested in 2025, with big games against visiting Oregon for the Sept. 27 White Out, with road trips to The Horseshoe for No. 3 Ohio State and to Kinnick to play always-tough Iowa. And there’s visits to Happy Valley by Indiana, a 2024 CFP team, and Nebraska, coached by State College townie and Pat Kraft best bud Matt Rhule. And maybe a Big Ten title game. And likely one, two, three or even four College Football Playoff games on the Road to No. 1.
So, does it really matter that the Nittany Lions’ first three homes are against below-standard competition?
(Definition of below-standard: Nevada is 8-33 in its last 41 games; FIU, Penn State’s opponent on Sept. 6, is riding a 13-42 streak and is ranked No. 128 in 2025; and Villanova’s an FCS school, whose 2025 schedule is littered with Sacred Hearts, Monmouths and Stony Brooks. And, after Sept. 13, broken hearts.)
Penn State’s goal for the 2025 season isn’t to beat the No. 1 or No. 3 team to start the season. It is to be in that No. 1-3 matchup in the final game of the season. And on Saturday in Beaver Stadium, that final game will be 142 days away, on Monday, Jan. 19 in Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens, Fla. That’s when the Fiesta Bowl champion will face the Peach Bowl champion in the College Football Playoff title game.
THE QUESTION
Which is why last week I asked Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki this question: “If your end goal is to win on Jan. 19, does it matter if you’re playing Nevada or Texas the first week of the season?”
Kotelnicki is always good for a glib, insightful and, I perceive, honest answer. Remember, Kotelnicki was the OC of a team that came within one drive — and a bad Drew Allar pick — of making it to the CFP title game last year. If you recall, the Nittany Lions defeated unranked and weather-challenged West Virginia, 7-6 Bowling Green and kruddy Kent State by the combined score of 124-39 to open the 2024 season. So, those games didn’t hurt the Nittany Lions’ CFP chances. And, that’s in part because Penn State bounced back against BG to win 34-27 after trailing 24-20 at the half.
More recalling: It was Notre Dame that beat the Nittany Lions in the CFP semifinals when Allar forced the ball inside instead of Drewing it away. It was the same Notre Dame that lost to unranked Northern Illinois 16-14 at home in Weak Too of the 2024 season. All the Irish did after that was win 13 straight, before falling to Ohio State 34-23 in last season’s CFP title game.
And hey, Ohio State didn’t open the 2024 season with Texas, that’s for sure. The Buckeyes, the 2024 national champs, opened their title-run season by beating Joe Moorhead’s Akron Zips, 52-6; walloping Western Michigan, 56-0; and running over Charles Huff Jr.’s Marshall Thundering Herd, 49-14.
The college football season and the CFP are NFL Jr.: It’s what you do down The Stretch that matters. Both Notre Dame and Ohio State played four playoff games to make it to The Title Game. No one asked who their season opener was against. Here’s the ranking of the teams the Fighting Irish and the Buckeyes met in the CFP:
• Notre Dame CFP opponents ranked: No. 10, 2, 6 and 8.
• Ohio State CFP opponents ranked: No. 9, 1, 5 and 7.
So, you can get there — Hard Rock on Jan. 19 — by not playing any hard non-conference opponents. You may think that’s a scheduling con, but Penn State under head coach James Franklin is a pro at it.
Franklin is 30-2 in non-conference games in 10 seasons at Penn State — PSU played only conference games in COVID 2020 — and won his only game against a team ranked in the Top 25 when they met. That would be No. 22 Auburn, which lost 28-20 to PSU in Beaver Stadium in 2022. After Penn State won the next year at Auburn, Franklin vowed to never return. The two losses came early in Franklin’s tenure at Penn State: 27-10 to Temple at Lincoln Field in Philadelphia in the 2015 season-opener and 42-39 at Pitt in the second game of 2016. (The Temple AD at the time? Pat Kraft.)
THE ANSWER
So, back to my query of Kotelnicki: “If your end goal is to win on Jan. 19, does it matter if you’re playing Nevada or Texas the first week of the season?”
Coach K’s reply: “No. No, it doesn’t. Our opponent is us, you know what I mean? You could come to our meetings the night before a game, and I’ll ask a guy, ‘So, what do we worry about?’ And they’re going to say, ‘Us.’ It doesn’t matter who you’re playing. What really matters is: What are you capable of? And are you doing it?
“So, schedules and all that, you have to put the ball down and play. Let’s go. You gotta do it. Yeah, there might be certain matchups or whatever across the country. People see rankings and all that stuff. It doesn’t matter, right? You got to go play, you know.
“So, our opponent is us. It’s always going to be us. Whoever we line up against, however good or bad that opponent is perceived to be, it doesn’t matter. Because if we don’t play to our potential, we’re pissed, right? We’re not happy as a program if we don’t play like we’re capable of playing. That’s what comes down. Are we good enough?”
And the real answer to that question may not come until January.
