Penn State football is the only team in the country I can think of that will be judged by the highest of high standards, and I don’t know that it is attributed to anything other than its recent success and near misses at getting over the top and winning a championship. But that is the standard that has been set for the Nittany Lions and, well, if you want to be elite — like James Franklin claims he wants the program to be — that is the ticket into the club.

Franklin has built Penn State into one of the best programs in the country, and all of the criticism he gets about not winning big games is probably a little unfair. The Nittany Lions have been a part of the national championship conversation for the past three seasons. They are 34-8 during that span, have finished in the top 10 two of

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