A lot of narratives have been circulating in the aftermath of the first loss of the Matt Campbell era on Saturday, in stunning fashion, against Wisconsin.

From soapboxing about the wrong hire to recalibrating expectations to comparisons to James Franklin, folks have said it all since Saturday.

As many of us have heard for several years now, the Franklin schtick is that he won the games he was supposed to. Many people have said that the Wisconsin game is one of those that he’d win, and although Penn State would crumble when the big games came around, he came with a 10-win floor that was taken for granted.

While Franklin did generate a fair amount of double-digit win seasons, they weren’t always the prototypical lose to Ohio State and Michigan, beat everyone else.

As you might’ve expected, while Franklin had a putrid 3-24 as an underdog, he went 101-21 (.828) as a favorite. Winning five out of every six in anything ain’t bad.

But especially in the days of the four-team playoff, those losses buried the team. When it happens to a top-five team, it’s one thing, but almost every Franklin year featured a perplexing loss comparable to what happened Saturday.

So, did Franklin really win the games he was supposed to?

The answer? It depends on your definition.

Let’s go season by season through Franklin’s tenure and see whether he beat the teams he was supposed to. We’ll use reported betting lines from Covers.com to assist us:

2014

Record as favorite: 5-3
Largest upset loss: Northwestern (favored by 9.5)

The first two years of the Franklin era deserve some asterisks, given the program was still reeling from sanctions, but they also offer an interesting comparison to the first year of the Campbell era.

While Campbell isn’t dealing with sanctions, he is dealing with unprecedented roster turnover off a 7-6 team.

Franklin lost three games as a favorite in 2014, but two of them were reasonable. A last-minute field goal lifted Maryland over the Nittany Lions, who were three-point favorites, in an early November matchup. Three weeks later, Penn State entered Memorial Stadium in Illinois as five-point favorites, but lost by two.

These two “upsets” also came with the flip side, as Franklin won multiple games the Nittany Lions were underdogs in, including the Croke Park Classic in Ireland over UCF (+1.5) and the Pinstripe Bowl against Boston College (+3).

All in all, it seemed like a pretty chalky season.

Except for one game.

Franklin’s first Homecoming on September 27, 2014, against Northwestern. The Nittany Lions were favored by 9.5 at kickoff, identical to the Wisconsin loss on Saturday, but got embarrassed in a sloppy 29-6 defeat.

2015

Record as favorite: 7-2
Largest upset loss: Temple (favored by six)

The sanctions were removed ahead of the 2015 season, but the team was still recovering from limited recruiting in the years before. It was another typical 7-6 season, and he mostly took care of business.

The two upset losses weren’t too bad. The Nittany Lions fell in Evanston, Illinois, as two-point favorites in mid-November, but their season was more defined by a disheartening 17-point defeat at Lincoln Financial Field against in-state foe Temple.

In the seven wins, Penn State covered four times, most impressively against Indiana (won 29-7 as 3.5-point favorites). An October 3 meeting with Army saw it nearly survive a late charge as three-touchdown favorites, winning 20-14.

2016

Record as favorite: 9-0
Largest upset loss: N/A

With the White Out upset over Ohio State, the Nittany Lions were officially back on the map.

In what ultimately proved as the arguable high point in his tenure, it was also a year that Franklin was perfect in a category he’d embrace over the ensuing decade: winning as a favorite.

It wasn’t always pretty. Penn State needed overtime in an early October game against Minnesota and struggled to shake off another frisky Matt Rhule-led Temple team, but it always got it done. That second half of the season saw consistent blowouts in Big Ten play as the team rode the energy from the Block Six.

All three losses that season were as underdogs. The close loss to Pitt early in the year was a push. Penn State got shellacked in every sense of the word at the Big House, and lost an instant classic in the Rose Bowl as seven-point dogs.

2017

Record as favorite: 11-1
Largest upset loss: Michigan State (9.5-point favorites)

In many ways, the 2017 team is often considered the best of the Franklin era. It got the final year of the Trace McSorley and Saquon Barkley duo with enough weapons to make noise on both sides of the ball.

They were painfully close to beating Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, as seven-point underdogs, but blew a double-digit lead in the fourth. As you’ll go on to see, Franklin’s teams tended to have things bleed into the following week.

One week later in East Lansing, Michigan, Penn State entered as near-double-digit favorites, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion to officially eliminate any hope of the College Football Playoff.

It had no problem in any of the other 11 games as favorite (aside from the walk-off touchdown in Kinnick Stadium in September as 13-point favorites), but as was unfortunately the case too many times, there was that one game you just couldn’t lose.

2018

Record as favorite: 9-2
Largest upset loss: Michigan State (13.5-point favorites)

Franklin’s reputation as a lock to win games as favorites came together in the 2020s, and as you can see, it was a sharp reversal from when he allowed these kinds of games to derail postseason hopes for his teams in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

The back-to-back losses to Michigan State, which both occurred directly after an emotional close loss to Ohio State, defined the McSorley era. A home loss as near-two-touchdown favorites after the debacle the week before (and the good-to-great-to-elite speech) was back-breaking.

Unlike the prior season, it wasn’t even a clean road the rest of the way.

Penn State tiptoed past Indiana and Iowa the following two weeks by one score, failing to cover, and won a sloppy 20-7 contest as 28.5-point favorites in Piscataway, New Jersey, against a bad Rutgers team. The only other loss as a favorite was in the Citrus Bowl, where McSorley left due to injury.

2019

Record as favorite: 11-1
Largest upset loss: Minnesota (6.5-point favorites)

Transitioning to a new quarterback is never easy, but things looked great out of the gate for Sean Clifford and the Nittany Lions, who coasted to an 8-0 start and went into November ranked No. 4 in the College Football Playoff poll. They’d be big underdogs in Columbus later in the month, but 11-1 might be good enough to do it.

As we know, that didn’t happen. They faced a frisky Minnesota group under new head coach P.J. Fleck in Minneapolis and wilted, losing 31-26 as 6.5-point favorites, and derailed the season.

A closer-than-anticipated win over Indiana the next week just set the tone for the double-digit loss to the Buckeyes as staggering 18.5-point underdogs.

It’s another one of those seasons that stretched the definition of winning games you’re supposed to. 11-1 is a good record, but that one loss doomed Penn State to the Cotton Bowl.

2020

Record as favorite: 3-4
Largest upset loss: Maryland (27-point favorites)

This season doesn’t count. I don’t care. You try losing your best offensive and defensive players in the month before a season surrounded by COVID-19 and empty stadiums and righting the ship.

Penn State opened the year with an absolutely bogus loss to Indiana as 6.5-point favorites that consisted of an extremely bad replay review of a two-point conversion. As part of the team’s 0-5 start, it also lost as small favorites to Nebraska (-3) and Iowa (-1.5).

But no game was more mortifying than the Maryland disaster. As 27-point favorites at home, Penn State was ran out of its own building, 35-19, in one of the worst losses of the Franklin era. It was the biggest upset, but also quite annoying considering the historical dominance over those turtles.

Throw this season out.

2021

Record as favorite: 6-3
Largest upset loss: Illinois (24.5-point favorites)

2021 was an extension of 2020, just way less excusable because the word had gone mostly back to normal. Penn State did start 5-0 and was ranked No. 4 in the country, just like 2019, but once again traveled to the Big Ten West and got humbled, losing as small underdogs in Kinnick Stadium to Iowa in the Ta’Quan Roberson game.

The season was derailed from there.

Two weeks later, Clifford returned only for the embarrassing nine-overtime game against Illinois, where Penn State lost as 23.5-point favorites. Later in the year, it also dropped a close one to Michigan in November as 2.5-point favorites.

Looking back, how on earth did Franklin get a 10-year extension out of Sandy Barbour in the midst of this meltdown?

2022

Record as favorite: 10-0
Largest upset loss: N/A

I now present to you Franklin’s three-year magnum opus.

That Michigan game in 2021 was the last time Franklin lost a regular-season game as a favorite for four years.

In 2022, the closest calls were the Thursday night classic in West Lafayette, Indiana, against Purdue (-3.5, won by four) and the ugly Northwestern game caked in pouring rain and wind (-25.5, won by 10). Even better, they covered all but two!

Now, the issue was the two losses to Michigan and Ohio State. Wonder if that’s a trend.

2023

Record as favorite: 10-1
Largest upset loss: Ole Miss (5.5-point favorites)

Obviously, a big asterisk toward the loss in the 2023 Peach Bowl, one in which a large part of Penn State’s starting defense opted out.

The 2023 Nittany Lions, especially their defense under Manny Diaz, felt like a team that should’ve been much better than we saw on the field. The way they wilted in the big games was very discouraging, but some excused Drew Allar’s inexperience at the time and said it was growing pains.

Against the teams they were supposed to beat, the Nittany Lions did phenomenally. They covered nine of the 10 spreads, with the lone exception of the bizarre Indiana game, where the hapless Hoosiers gave the 30.5-point favorite Nittany Lions a scare at Beaver Stadium.

Man, imagine if some guy from James Madison turned those guys into a contender.

2024

Record as favorite: 13-1
Largest upset loss: Notre Dame (1.5-point favorites)

The only playoff team of the Franklin era, Penn State benefited from a change in the Big Ten format and avoided a 2017-esque stumble to a worse opponent, but warning signs started to show behind the narrative.

As 34.5-point favorites against Bowling Green, the Nittany Lions trailed in the second half and barely survived an embarrassing upset. They also failed to cover in closer-than-expected wins over Illinois and UCLA.

The biggest scare was in late November, when Minnesota nearly killed their playoff hopes for the second time in six years, with Penn State surviving 26-25 as 12.5-point favorites.

They did lose as a technical favorite in the CFP Semifinal and Orange Bowl against Notre Dame, but when it’s a line like that, you can’t call it a game you’re supposed to win.

2025

Record as favorite: 3-3
Largest upset loss: UCLA (24.5-point favorites)

It was supposed to be the best roster in the Franklin era, one where everything had come together to make this year different. If they were ever going to make the jump to elite, it was right there.

As we know, this didn’t happen. Franklin was fired by mid-October after a tragic loss in the White Out spiraled into back-to-back losses as 20+ point favorites, the first time that happened in college football history.

It was an incredible shift. Penn State had won over 30 regular-season games in a row as a favorite, and the foundation of Franklin having a high floor collapsed overnight.

Verdict

Franklin’s teams beat who they were supposed to beat in 2016, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

In every other season of his tenure, there was at least one loss that had you shaking your head, whether it was a regular October game in the sanction years, a ridiculous upset that derailed a season, or a loss that ended hopes of a playoff run.

If Campbell lets the Wisconsin failure torpedo into a long losing streak, there might be something here. But him losing just one game, one that Franklin has several examples of losing for extremely random reasons, makes it a big nothing-burger to compare them so far.

Hopefully, Penn State can rebound on Friday night and put that, and all this noise, behind them.