Rece Davis makes case Penn State’s only CFP path includes win vs. Ohio State

The Penn State Nittany Lions went all-in on making a deep College Football Playoff run in 2025. Now, that goal seems further away than ever before, coming off back-to-back losses, including an awful upset loss to UCLA.

Penn State is in a precarious spot. That doesn’t mean they’re entirely out of the CFP race, though. ESPN’s Rece Davis explained on the College GameDay Podcast that there’s still a path for the Nittany Lions. It just requires winning out and beating Ohio State.

“Now you look at it from the big picture,” Rece Davis said. “And you say, ‘Was this disqualifying for the College Football Playoff?’ Absent a victory over Ohio State, I say, ‘Yes. It’s disqualifying.'”

The UCLA loss knocked Penn State from being ranked in the Top 10 of the AP Poll to being unranked in the current AP Poll. Obviously, the CFP isn’t using the AP rankings, but it goes to show the perception shift that the Nittany Lions have undergone. Now, they need to find a way to make up for that. Beating Ohio State, as well as Indiana, would help that.

“Not because — and I already hear it. I’ve seen some of the stuff,” Davis said. “And kudos to the Big Ten fans who are tweeting stuff like this, saying, ‘Okay, SEC fans. UCLA shows how deep our conference is. Is that the way it works?’ It’s snarky and it’s funny, but if they’re injected with truth serum, they know that’s not what anybody’s talking about. Not a loss like this. What this loss is, it’s a loss like Northern Illinois for Notre Dame last year. You say, ‘Wait a minute, Rece Davis, they went to the Playoff.’ You’re right. They also had zero margin for error after that.”

The 12-team CFP is still relatively new. It’s not fair to say that it’s impossible for a three-loss team to make the field as an at-large team, but none did last season without also winning a Power Four conference. For Davis, that situation is exacerbated in Penn State’s case by how bad the UCLA loss was, against a team that will likely finish with a losing record and had an interim head coach.

“If Penn State wins out, and they have a victory at Ohio State, they probably with this loss — I shouldn’t say this with all the chaos that could ensue, they probably still won’t make it into the Big Ten Championship Game, but they might. So, they’re not disqualified from it mathematically if they do that. But three losses with that loss is no good. It’s very much like Alabama last year. Three losses is not the problem. It’s how you lost and to whom you lost. Same thing with Ole Miss last year. Three losses. It wasn’t the problem that they lost three. They lost to Kentucky. Alabama lost to Oklahoma and looked awful doing it,” Davis said.

“So, now Penn State has one of those on its resume. Lost to them. Looked awful doing it. UCLA is not going to suddenly, I don’t think, turn it around and wind up being a close to .500 team. So, this is one of those albatrosses that sticks with you, and now you have zero margin for error.”

The reality for Penn State is that their wins are against fairly easy competition and they’re 0-2 in Big Ten play. They’ve looked inconsistent throughout the season, though. So, for Davis, if that’s how they continue to perform, they’re not going to do the things needed to make the CFP. That falls on head coach James Franklin to turn things around quickly.

“We’ll find out if they’re able to respond. The problem with saying that is that is all logical and based on mathematics and the fact that you never know. As my friend Lou Holtz used to always say, ‘You’ve got a different football team every week. You do not have the same football team from one week to the next.’ So, they’re going to need a different football team to show up starting next game, and a different football team from what we saw Saturday against UCLA. If the good version of Penn State ever shows up, and it hasn’t yet, then maybe they’ve got a chance,” Davis said.

“But, absent that, the mathematical probability or possibility is still there. The likelihood and the evidence from what we’ve seen on the field is not there. Nothing we’ve seen from Penn State screams Playoff team yet. It screams underachievers. It screams missed opportunities. They’ll have to — they’ve got to be a different team and win out in order to be under consideration for a Playoff spot. Absent the Big Ten going crazy, them somehow backdooring their way into the Championship Game and winning their way in that way.”

Penn State now returns home, needing to bounce back in a major way. They’ll look to do that against Northwestern on Saturday. Kickoff for that game is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. EST.