These 5 college football teams will win a national championship soon

This may feel like a few spots too high, but we absolutely need to have James Franklin‘s Penn State Nittany Lions on this list. Though they’ve never made the College Football Playoff before, the Nittany Lions have won a Big Ten Championship in the playoff era. Being able to do that signifies they’re one one-loss season away from representing the Big Ten in the playoff. It will happen.

Every year since 2014, at least one team has made the College Football Playoff for the first time in school history. The LSU Tigers were the team to pull it off last season. Penn State is either No. 1 or No. 2 in terms of the most likely program to do it this year. The Nittany Lions get the division rival Ohio State Buckeyes at Happy Valley this year. If they win at Beaver Stadium, they’ll win the East.

And that’s everything in the Big Ten these days. Until we’re proven wrong, the Big Ten champion will come out of the Big Ten East. Unless we’re really buying into what Paul Chryst is doing with the Wisconsin Badgers, P.J. Fleck with the Minnesota Golden Gophers or even Scott Frost with the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the winner of the Big Ten East will end up making the four-team playoff.

In short, Penn State is beating two division rivals in a year away from getting to Indianapolis and winning its conference championship. The Nittany Lions recruit at an SEC level. As with every team on this list, Penn State is one of 20 teams that can make the playoff and one of maybe a dozen that can win it all in 2020. Franklin is expected to win a national title by 2025. He can totally do it.