Penn State fell to No. 12 in the CFP rankings. Can they make a New Year’s Six bowl?

Jon Sauber
·3 min read
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Penn State football fell to No. 12 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings released Tuesday night. The Nittany Lions were No. 10 before losing 25-16 to the now-No. 3 Michigan Wolverines.

Here’s what Penn State’s ranking means moving forward.

Re-calibrating their goals

Any chance of making the College Football Playoff is now gone for Penn State and that means the program will have to set its sights a tad lower this year. That means a New Year’s Six bowl, which the Nittany Lions made last year when they faced off with Utah in the Rose Bowl, is the new target. That can be a difficult pill to swallow for a program that had such high expectations heading into the season. Instead they’ll have to remain motivated when they take on two teams that could easily catch them off guard and take them out of consideration for their new goal. Penn State still has to take care of business despite the things it originally wanted to achieve being out of reach. That begins this weekend when the Nittany Lions face a Rutgers team that has been feisty so far this season.

Getting help from Iowa

The other issue for the Nittany Lions is that they will need to stay ahead of a number of other teams who could easily take the remaining spots for a New Year’s Six bid. They’re not going to be able to improve on their own resume all that much, so the best way to do that will be to have their wins they already have look even better. At this point, that starts and ends with the Iowa Hawkeyes. The Hawkeyes, who came in at No. 16 in the latest rankings, were shut out 31-0 by Penn State in Beaver Stadium earlier this season. That is by far the Nittany Lions’ best win to date and will only look better if they manage to not only finish the regular season 10-2, but go on to the Big Ten Championship game and play competitively against either Ohio State or Michigan.

Where things stand

There should be reasonable concern that Penn State can miss out on a New Year’s Six game, but heading into Tuesday night plenty of bowl projections had the Nittany Lions landing in one. They’ve been projected to the Peach Bowl by ESPN’s Mark Schlabach, Action Network’s Brett McMurphy, CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm and 247Sports. The Athletic has them in the Cotton Bowl, while USA Today has them in the Fiesta Bowl. Those projections could change based on how the latest CFP rankings shook out, but they still bode well for Penn State. Things can obviously change if teams behind them impress over the next two weeks, but right now the Nittany Lions have to feel good about their chances of making a New Year’s Six game despite how the Michigan game played out. Now all that’s left to do is win the final two and leave it in the hands of the committee.

Here’s the complete list of this week’s CFP rankings.

1. Georgia

2. Ohio State

3. Michigan

4. Florida State

5. Washington

6. Oregon

7. Texas

8. Alabama

9. Missouri

10. Louisville

11. Oregon State

12. Penn State

13. Ole Miss

14. Oklahoma

15. LSU

16. Iowa

17. Arizona

18. Tennessee

19. Notre Dame

20. North Carolina

21. Kansas State

22. Utah

23. Oklahoma State

24. Tulane

25. Kansas