Penn State football was slotted in at No. 4 in the College Football Playoff committee’s first top 25 of the 2019 season.

The Nittany Lions have never been in the College Football Playoff’s top four prior to tonight’s rankings, and they snuck past reigning national champion Clemson to take the fourth spot.

The end-of-season fates of the past No. 4 squads in the first CFP rankings of the year are a bit of a mixed bag. Three of five teams have ended up making the Playoff with one winning a title, while the other two teams collapsed during November.

Here’s how the past five teams to debut at No. 4 in the College Football Playoff committee’s rankings fared for the rest of their seasons.

2014: Ole Miss

Ole Miss was on an absolute tear entering the inaugural College Football Playoff rankings, but things fell apart for the Rebels in the back half of the 2014 season.

Head coach Hugh Freeze’s squad vaulted itself into the national title conversation with a 23-17 home upset of mighty Alabama in week six, and the team trounced Tennessee to boast an 8-0 record as the committee released its first rankings. However, a 10-7 loss to then-No. 24 LSU in Death Valley was the first of three defeats the team would suffer before the end of the regular season.

Then-No. 3 Auburn took down the Rebels in Oxford to send them spiraling down to No. 10 and dash their national title hopes. Ole Miss picked up a cupcake win over Presbyterian before getting blown out by unranked Arkansas 30-0 on the road. After falling to No. 19, the Rebels beat Dak Prescott and No. 4 Mississippi State to kill their in-state rivals’ Playoff hopes.

Ole Miss’ season ended on a sour note with a 42-3 beatdown at the hands of TCU in the Peach Bowl. The team finished the year with a 9-4 record.

2015: Alabama

Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide was 7-1 and the No. 4 team in the Playoff committee’s first rankings of the 2015 season. They didn’t just qualify for the College Football Playoff. They won the whole damn thing.

Alabama’s only blemish was a 43-37 shootout loss to pesky Ole Miss at home. As they always seem to do, the Crimson Tide rattled off 12 straight wins — including an SEC title over Florida and a Cotton Bowl thrashing of fellow College Football Playoff qualifiers Michigan State — en route to a showdown with Clemson in the title game.

No. 2 Alabama took down No. 1 Clemson in an epic, back-and-forth 45-40 shootout to capture its first championship of the College Football Playoff era and fourth title under Saban. The Crimson Tide avenged a 42-35 semifinal defeat to Ohio State in the first iteration of the College Football Playoff.

2016: Texas A&M

Texas A&M began the 2016 season with a 7-1 record that included wins over then-No. 9 Tennessee and a pair of other top-20 sides in UCLA and Arkansas. The Aggies’ only blemish was a defeat on the road to No. 1 Alabama, so the team slotted into the fourth spot to begin the College Football Playoff’s rankings.

As it turned out, however, week nine of the 2016 season was a turning point for the worse. The Aggies lost consecutive games to Mississippi State and Ole Miss, and they fell all the way down to No. 25 in the rankings as a result.

Head coach Kevin Sumlin’s squad bounced back from that with a win against Texas-San Antonio before ending the season with consecutive losses to LSU and Kansas State — the latter of which came in the Texas Bowl.

That Texas Bowl defeat capped off an 8-5 season for A&M. To this day, the Aggies are the only team to begin the College Football Playoff rankings at No. 4 and fall all the way out of the poll entirely by season’s end.

2017: Clemson

Dabo Swinney and the Clemson Tigers started off the 2017 season’s College Football Playoff rankings at No. 4. They finished that season as the No. 1 team in the nation entering the postseason.

Clemson’s only defeat in the 2017 regular season took place at the Carrier Dome against unranked Syracuse. As you may remember, that loss paved the way for Penn State to earn the No. 2 ranking in the AP Top 25 poll for the first time since 1999. But as it turns out, the Tigers ended up just fine that year.

The Tigers ran the table going into their conference title clash with then-No. 7 Miami. Quarterback Kelly Bryant led Clemson to a resounding 38-3 win to secure his team’s spot in the Playoff, but Alabama handled the Tigers 24-6 in the national semifinals before taking down Georgia in that year’s title game.

Although Clemson’s defense of the 2016 national championship came up short, the team did manage to prove its worth as a top-four side and qualify for the mini-tournament.

2018: Notre Dame

Notre Dame is always a controversial figure in the College Football Playoff equation because of its lack of a conference affiliation. Despite this, the Fighting Irish managed to run the table throughout the regular season and secure a spot in the four-team Playoff as an independent.

Head coach Brian Kelly’s side did have a few impressive wins leading into the first College Football Playoff rankings — including three over ranked opponents in No. 14 Michigan, then-No. 7 Stanford, and No. 24 Virginia Tech. Aside from a neutral-site triumph over No. 12 Syracuse, Notre Dame’s late-season schedule was fairly easy. The team beat Northwestern, Florida State, and USC to clinch its spot in the four-team playoff.

Clemson quickly proved that Notre Dame was maybe not the best choice to play for a national title. Trevor Lawrence and the Tigers thrashed the Irish 30-3 in that year’s Cotton Bowl before trouncing Alabama 44-16 to cap off a perfect 15-0 season.