Penn State looking up at Ohio State, Alabama in new post-spring top 25

Penn State football enters the summer as the trendy pick to be the nation’s top team entering the 2025 season. But the Nittany Lions find themselves bumped from the No. 1 spot in the latest look at the top 25 rankings coming out of the spring.

On Thursday, ESPN’s Bill Connelly released his updated SP+ rankings following spring practice and transfer portal window. Penn State came in at No. 3, trailing Big Ten rival Ohio State – who claimed the top spot – and Alabama.

SP+ is a predictive measure that adjusts for a program’s returning production, recent recruiting, and history over the last four seasons. The Nittany Lions earned an overall SP+ score of 27.7, narrowly below the Crimson Tide at 27.9 and 1.8 points behind the Buckeyes at 29.5.

The rankings of the nation’s top four teams remained unchanged from February’s SP+. Texas jumped Notre Dame and Oregon to claim the No. 5 spot coming out of the spring.

NEW: ESPN SP+ College Football Top 25 via @ESPN_BillC👀

The SP+ factors returning production, recent recruiting, and information from the previous four seasons. https://t.co/eyaP9ayXWn pic.twitter.com/Kl8A3NN5tw

— On3 (@On3sports) May 22, 2025

However, despite falling below their conference foe in the top 25 rankings, James Franklin and the Nittany Lions have slightly better odds of returning to the College Football Playoff this fall. Adjusting for schedule strength, Connelly concludes that any Big Ten squad with a record of 10-2 or better will likely find itself in the playoff field come season’s end. With the 29th-ranked strength of schedule, Penn State has an 82% chance of winning at least 10 regular season games in 2025, the highest in the league. Ohio State and Oregon have 77% and 73% odds of going at least 10-2, respectively.

Penn State football is looking for the program’s first preseason top-five ranking in over a quarter century. The last time the Nittany Lions were ranked inside the top five of the AP Poll to start the year was 1999; they last claimed the top spot in 1997.

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