The hype for Penn State football in 2025 is real, and it’s spectacular. I have been following Penn State football for just over three decades now, going from a young sports fan watching Ki-Jana Carter and Kerry Collins blast their way to an undefetaed and unrewarded undefetaed season in 1994 to brekaing into the sports media world by covering Penn State football wiht some of my earliest press credentials, and there are a small handful of seasons I remember feeling the way I do about this team going into the new season. And it seems my giddiness is not unwarranted.
A week after Penn State was given the no. 3 ranking in the preseason US LBM Coaches Poll, the Nittany Lions came within five points of being the preseason no. 1 in the AP Top 25. We have been here before with Penn State getting high national praise going into the season. The 1997 team began the year as the top-ranked team, and Joe Jurevicius was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s preview magazine. The 1999 team started off in the top three and rocked Arizona to start the year with a bang (LaVar Arrington graced the cover of that year’s Sports Illustrated preview issue). The 2017 team looked poised for big things a year after a surprising run to the Big Ten title. But something about this season feels different to me.
If you check out on college football during the offseason, perhaps choosing not to think about the sport since the final seconds of Penn State’s College Football Playoff semifinal loss to Notre Dame ticked off, nobody can blame you. There are more important things to focus on from February through the dog days of summer. So you may have missed the fact that Penn State is set to bring back one of the most experienced and veteran-led rosters in the country, not just the Big Ten. It is a major reason why Penn State was primed to receive…
Source link : https://nittanylionswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/nittany-lions/football/2025/08/12/penn-state-football-column-2025-hype/85617082007/
Author :
Publish date : 2025-08-12 16:00:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
