To say Penn State football has been successful over the last three seasons is a tremendous understatement.

Under the leadership of James Franklin, the team has won a Big Ten Championship, earned two (likely soon to be three) consecutive New Year’s Six Bowl bids, and become a consistent Top 25 presence. All of this success makes it easy to forget just how uncertain a position the program was in less than five years ago.

In January 2014, head coach Bill O’Brien decided to leave the program to take over the Houston Texans after just two seasons in Happy Valley.

Losing a head coach for a “better” job was a foreign thought to many Penn State fans. For so long, Penn State football and Joe Paterno had been synonymous, and to have Paterno’s immediate successor leave after only two years was a gut punch. Now a program still knee deep in sanctions following the Jerry Sandusky scandal was left without a leader.

A nine-day search that felt more like an eternity began to find O’Brien’s replacement. Names like Al Golden, Mike Munchak, and Greg Schiano were floated out as candidates for the job, but Penn State ultimately settled on Vanderbilt’s James Franklin.

Franklin’s resume with the Commodores was impressive. In three seasons at the helm, he led the team to three straight bowl appearances and back-to-back nine-win seasons, neither of which were small feats for the perennial SEC East bottom dweller.

Vanderbilt has had only three winning seasons since 1983. Two of them were under Franklin in consecutive years. The Commodores haven’t been able to break the six-win barrier since he left for Penn State.

It was during Franklin’s introductory press conference that he would utter the now famous words.

“We’re going to dominate the state. That is the first thing that we’re going to do,” Franklin said. “When I say Penn State, that is the whole state. We will recruit every corner of this state, every school of this state, every neighborhood of this state. And when I say recruit, not only just the student athletes, I mean the people of the great state of Pennsylvania. We will recruit everybody, and that is with tremendous respect for the University of Pittsburgh. But we are…Penn State.”

With less than a month to go before National Signing Day, Franklin and his staff would have to work quickly to fill out their recruiting class. In that short span of time, Franklin landed Saeed Blacknall, and managed to flip Grant Haley, Amani Oruwariye, Koa Farmer, and an undersized quarterback named Trace McSorley from Vanderbilt.

These names were added to a class that already included Mike Gesicki, Chris Godwin, DeAndre Thompkins, Marcus Allen, Nick Scott, Troy Apke, Christian Campbell, and Jason Cabinda.

Franklin’s hectic recruiting efforts were seen as a job well done at the time. But nobody could have predicted what the 2014 recruiting class was going to accomplish.

“You look at their record, the senior class, I think all things considered, maybe one of the most impressive senior classes in school history,” Franklin said.

The success wasn’t immediate. Most of the members of Franklin’s first recruiting class would need to wait and bide their time. Those that did play did so only sparingly.

The team on the field had its issues. The scholarship restrictions imposed by the sanctions had crippled the Nittany Lions’ offensive line, so much so that Franklin was forced to convert a couple of defensive tackles to offensive guards.

Quarterback Christian Hackenberg appeared to be on his way to stardom under O’Brien, but in Franklin’s offensive system, Hackenberg looked like a square peg in a round hole.

Despite the lack of depth across the entire roster and the poor scheme fit at quarterback, Franklin was able to keep the program’s head above water with consecutive 7-6 seasons.

Then, finally, the breakout happened in 2016. Members of the 2014 recruiting class had developed into veteran roles, and Trace McSorley — who broadcasters won’t let us forget was recruited as a safety — finally had his chance to show the skeptics what he could do.

But the season didn’t start like the magical year it turned out to be. A loss to Pitt and a complete derailment on the road at Michigan left the Nittany Lions at 2-2. The “fire Franklin” chants beamed down from the stands as the Nittany Lions went into the half of their fifth game down 13-3 against Minnesota.

Something clicked when they came out of the locker room.

A comeback overtime win over the Golden Gophers.
An upset of No. 2 Ohio State.
A nine-game winning streak capped off by a 21-point come-from-behind win over Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game.

Penn State football was officially back.

The reemergence into college football’s big time could be chalked up to the generational talent like Barkley or current NFL-level players like Godwin, Gesicki, and Allen, but there’s something to be said about the player not many thought of as a quarterback showing up to Penn State and rewriting the record books.

“I think early on, [McSorley] probably didn’t get enough credit, but when you talk to other college coaches, when I see college coaches on the road recruiting, when I see college coaches at the convention, they will always say, this guy is special,” Franklin said. “It starts and ends with your quarterback.”

Just a handful of players remain from Franklin’s original class — Scott, Thompkins, Farmer, Oruwariye, Wright, and McSorley. These last links to the beginning of a new chapter for Penn State will play at Beaver Stadium one last time this Saturday against Maryland for Senior Day.

Remember them for the wins, remember them for the trips to Indy and Pasadena, or remember them for those White Out memories two years ago against the Buckeyes. There’s one common theme that will forever unite this group: They put Penn State football back on the map.