Think back to this time a year ago.
Penn State entered the 2025 season as a top-10 team and a trendy national title pick. By the second week of November, the Nittany Lions were 3-6, their head coach had been fired, and a season filled with promise had unraveled during a six-game losing streak.
That’s a reminder of how quickly fortunes can change in college football. The teams generating offseason buzz don’t always deliver.
Which brings us to 2026, where Penn State now leads the list of teams whose stock is rising heading into the season.
FOX Sports lead college football analyst Joel Klatt revealed his latest “stock up” and “stock down” teams during a recent episode of “The Joel Klatt Show.”
Klatt: Matt Cambell is now the new head coach at Penn State. This program was 7-6 last season, and I think this is clearly trending up. James Franklin had one very specific issue: losing big games. Once they lost that Oregon game, the season spiraled out of control.
Campbell is a perfect fit at Penn State. His 10 seasons at Iowa State should tell us one thing: this team is going to be solid.
In this era, you’re going to have years when you just hit the schedule lottery, and Penn State is set to face what I would say is a soft Big Ten schedule. They brought in a ton of guys from Iowa State, including QB Rocco Becht, whose 39 career starts are the most among returning quarterbacks in college football, and they have a schedule that really has a floor of nine wins.
The toughest games on the schedule are USC at home, Michigan on the road, Washington on the road, and then Minnesota at home the following week. This is a schedule they can do some damage with.
Theyre certainly going to win more than seven games. There’s no doubt. I think they could be a 10-2 team fighting for a College Football Playoff spot.
Klatt: Alabama is going to be a good football team, but I dont know if thats going to be enough. The Crimson Tide are losing their most important player in Ty Simpson, who carried them to some of those wins last year. Now you dont have him. They won 11 games, reached the College Football Playoff and played in the Rose Bowl. They’re not doing that again.
Alabama doesn’t have a terribly difficult schedule, at least by SEC standards, but this isn’t going to be as good a team as it was a year ago.
I like Kalen DeBoer. I think he’s a wonderful football coach. The one thing he’s struggled with throughout his career is finding a reliable running game to complement what has consistently been an elite passing attack. Last year, Alabama couldn’t run the football. It’s actually shocking to watch Alabama line up and not be able to run the football.
They’ve got to fix that, and I don’t know if that’s going to happen. They lost a first-round offensive tackle in Kadyn Proctor. They lost a first-round quarterback. They lost Germie Bernard. Are they going to be great on defense? I think that remains to be seen.
This is going to be a young team. They’re going to be inexperienced, particularly at quarterback. In my estimation, experience at the quarterback position is the most important ingredient for any team in the country, and it’s very difficult to have top-end success with an inexperienced quarterback.
Klatt: Lane Kiffin is a great coach. He’s done this before. He took Ole Miss, brought in a ton of transfers, rebuilt the culture and had a lot of success. It’s not like he has to reinvent the wheel.
This is a program that has won national championships. The expectation at LSU is to compete at the top, and they haven’t been doing that. They went 7-6 and fired their head coach. Now you look at the talent they’ve brought in â including QB Sam Leavitt â and ask yourself: Is this really a seven-win team?
The answer is no. Absolutely not. I think this team is going to compete for a College Football Playoff spot.
LSU ha
