Referendum Seasons: Why the schedule, quarterbacks add pressure to Dabo Swinney, James Franklin in 2025

Penn State and Clemson both enter this season as top-four teams, with the Nittany Lions at No. 2 and the Tigers at No. 4 in the Preseason AP Poll. Those expectations, and the window of opportunity in University Park and Clemson, is why it feels a little now-or-never for both of James Franklin and Dabo Swinney.

On ‘Josh Pate’s College Football Show’ on Sunday, Josh Pate labeled this as a referendum season for each of Franklin and Swinney. That’s with the path to contention similarly being there for both of their programs out of the Big Ten and ACC, respectively, as well as in the College Football Playoff.

“I also think it’s a referendum season for two other guys, and this is going to be really fun to watch because neither of them have any room to complain. The entire runway is built exactly how they would have it built,” said Pate. “It is a referendum season for James Franklin at Penn State. It is a referendum season for Dabo Swinney at Clemson.”

When breaking them down, Penn State and Clemson are constructed and projected very similarly for this season . The Nittany Lions and Tigers, led by among the more consistent coaches in college football, each have straightforward slates this fall, each have returning quarterbacks who are among the best in the sport, and each are among the nation’s leaders in returning production with nine names combined between the two rosters being named as AP Preseason All-Americans.

That had both built to the point of contending last year as both played for their conference titles last season, Clemson winning the ACC and Penn State running up in the Big Ten, and both going on to make the CFP, with the Tigers returning to the field and losing in the first round to Texas while the Nittany Lions’ debut appearance reached the semifinals. Now, a year later, both programs brought enough back, and added some on top of that, to be among the favorites to win it all this year.

“Both of them have the quarterbacks that they have recruited and developed in-house and built towards this year in Drew Allar and Cade Klubnik. Both of them have very manageable schedules. Last year, they had a lot of the same pieces that they’ll have this year, and they weren’t quite good enough but they were both playoff teams,” said Pate. “So, the question becomes how much did they improve? Or, is just a little bit better version of what they were last year good enough? Is Clemson’s depth good enough? Is Penn State’s wide receiver room, filled with those transfers, good enough?”

With that being the case for both, 2025 has almost everything riding on it for Swinney and Franklin. Either it all works out for each of them and they’re truly contending for either another or a first national championship. Or, it doesn’t work out and both their title-winning windows may be closed again.

“There is one path where one or both of them are in the final four, national championship game. Maybe one of them wins it and, I mean, what a story that is no matter what,” said Pate. “You’re talking about one of the bigger stories in the last couple of decades in college football is either one of them wins it, for different reasons. One of them is thought to not be able to do it, period. The other one is thought to have the game having passed him by. And so it would be a gigantic I told you so by Dabo Swinney. It’d be I told you I could from James Franklin.”

“There is another world that we at least have to acknowledge could exist, and that is they’re just okay, they’re just another version, like a copy and paste of last year – which probably is good enough for Penn State to, who knows, go to the Big Ten title game but not win it, Clemson maybe good enough to win the ACC but nothing much more than that. And, you can’t call that a failure of a season but you kind of can call it a failure of a season,” Pate said. “Clemson and Penn State will not be viewed that way this time next year, I don’t think they’ll be viewed that way. So it is very much more of a window-type opportunity for them than maybe still some of the big boys that are there every single year.”

In the end, only one team is going to win the national championship, and it could very well be one of Penn State or Clemson. But, with the expansion of the playoff, and with what all is on both of these teams coming off last season and into this one, both the Nittany Lions and Tigers will need to be at least in the semifinals, if not further, to justify what this year represents to each.