If you haven’t noticed, the 2025 season will be James Franklin’s 12th season in Happy Valley. Through the first 11 years, there have been some ups and downs. Some good and some bad. Some excitement and whatever the hell John Donovan’s offense was supposed to be.
One of the more intriguing conversations in the BSD Slack as the 2024 playoff run took place was just how good the 2024 version of Penn State was. Was it better than the 2023 season that had a tougher schedule? What about the 2016 version that won the Big Ten title? Or the 2017 team that gave up fourth quarter leads in back-to-back weeks to kill its CFP hopes?