Penn State easily dispatched of Delaware in a Week 2 matchup in Beaver Stadium on Saturday, and head coach James Franklin is not about to apologize for the mismatch. Delaware may be among the 25 best FCS programs this season, but the Blue Hens do little to provide any boost to the overall strength of schedule for the Nittany Lions. As far as Franklin is concerned, that is a bit of a necessary evil and the reality of the landscape of college football.
“I think if you look at the model of teams that have been in the championship, teams that have been in the playoffs, teams that have won conference championships, I think there’s pretty good data and evidence on what’s the right thing to do,” Franklin said when asked for his thoughts to criticisms over Penn State scheduling a game against an FCS program like Delaware.
Of course, Franklin has a case to be made here. Take last year’s four College Football Playoff participants, for example. Georgia, last year’s national champion, hosted Samford and won 33-0 in their second game of the season after opening against a power conference opponent (Oregon). The season before, when Georgia won its first of back-to-back national titles, the Bulldogs opened with a game against Clemson and hosted Charleston Southern late in the regular season, as a handful of SEC teams tend to do with their schedules.
TCU, who lost in the national championship game to Georgia, also hosted an FCS team in Week 2 last season. The Horned Frogs blew out Tarlton State a week after facing Colorado. Ohio State and Michigan, to their credit, did not face any FCS opponents last season, but the Wolverines were hardly tested with their non-conference slate of Colorado State, Hawaii, and UConn.
The scheduling of FCS schools has been a talking point for a number of years. Penn State avoided it for a long time but a game against an FCS school on a regular basis is probably here to stay, whether Franklin agrees with it or not. When nine games are locked in for conference matchups, a school like Penn State will do what it feels is necessary to ensure getting as many home games as possible. A one-off game against an FCS school is the easiest way to go about filling a vacancy on the schedule in a sport where schedules can be booked years, if not decades in advance.
“And again, like we talked about before, nine [conference] games factors into that as well,” Franklin explained. “Those things have kind of changed college football more than anything back when you used to play the kickoff classic games and things like that, but with eight conference games it was different.”
“So, I think at the end of the day, you’re trying to do what you think is right for your university and your program,” Franklin said. “That’s myself and the athletic director, but you’re also doing studies and studying the data and seeing what the data says. So, this could be a long discussion.”
Penn State’s last non-conference game in the 2023 schedule will not be played until Oct. 14, against UMass. The Nittany Lions will host Villanova in 2025 after hosting the Wildcats in 2022. Delaware will return to Penn State’s schedule again in 2027.
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