BREAKING: Penn State football ranked in top 10 of historic preseason AP Poll

James Franklin and Penn State football surpassed another milestone on Monday as we move toward the start of the 2024 season. The Nittany Lions learned their place in the first AP Poll of the year in a historic preseason poll for the program.

The Nittany Lions will start 2024 inside the top 10 of the preseason AP Poll, checking in at No. 8. Last season, the Blue and White were ranked No. 7 for their Week 1 matchup against West Virginia.

Like the Coaches Poll released last week, Penn State football is the third-highest-ranked program from the Big Ten, falling behind No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Oregon, and one spot ahead of No. 9 Michigan.

The full preseason top 25 can be seen here.

BREAKING: Georgia is No. 1 in the preseason AP Top 25 and Ohio State is No. 2 as expanded SEC and Big Ten dominate.

See full poll: https://t.co/7dTTUiSC1j pic.twitter.com/xhzCrzACze

— AP Top 25 (@AP_Top25) August 12, 2024

Beyond the top 10 ranking, there’s also some historical significance to this AP Poll for the Nittany Lions. With Monday’s ranking, Penn State football has now appeared in its 50th preseason AP Poll since 1950. Making 67% of the 75 polls since the mid-20th century, only eight programs have more appearances than the Nittany Lions.

Penn State football has been ranked in the AP Poll now for 31 consecutive weeks, dating back to Week 2 of the 2022 season. The Nittany Lions finished 2023 at No. 13, their lowest ranking of the season.

Where does James Franklin feel Penn State football is at?

© Dan Rainville / USA TODAY NETWORK

As training camp is now in full swing, this is about the time when we can start to get a better idea of the identity of the current Nittany Lions roster.

Last season, Penn State relied heavily on its defense, which was one of the nation’s elite. So far this year, James Franklin says the battle in camp is distributed more evenly. However, he’s still looking for more consistency on both sides of the football.

“It’s more even than it’s been in the past,” Franklin said following practice last week. “What I would say is we’re still inconsistent with that, where, to me, it should come down to, like, one or two reps in every period who wins. And we have that. But then we have other days where the defense dominates a period. Then we’ll have other days where offense dominates a period.

“And what I talk to the guys about is, we can’t have a bad quarter on offense or a bad quarter on defense. We got to make sure for the games that we want to win, we got to play really well in all three phases.

“So it’s more competitive than it’s been in terms of the score. And we keep score. Every single day, we put it up there. We track explosive plays, we track turnovers, and then we track competitive periods, and who won the periods. And I want to say it’s been tied more than it hasn’t been.”

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