Before this past season, Penn State coach James Franklin didn’t want his team to talk about the possibility of winning a Big Ten Conference championship. At that point, no player on the team — or Franklin himself — had been to one.
But at fall camp in August, Penn State’s captains approached Franklin and told him the team wanted to begin talking about winning a conference championship. Franklin relented, sophomore defensive end Ryan Buchholz said.
Of course, the Nittany Lions went on to win the Big Ten title four months later, defeating Wisconsin, 38-31, to earn the program’s first Rose Bowl bid since 2009.