What is Penn State’s path to the College Football Playoff after losing to UCLA?

You'll forgive Penn State fans if their team's College Football Playoff hopes are the last thing they want to talk or think about right now. A week after falling flat in a big spot yet again, losing at home in overtime to No. 6 Oregon, Saturday's trip to the Rose Bowl to take on UCLA seemed like the ultimate get-right spot — the Bruins are arguably the worst team in the Power 4, a program that just fired its coach a couple of weeks ago, and they entered the week 0-4 with losses to such luminaries as New Mexico, UNLV and Northwestern. Say what you will about James Franklin, but these are games he always handles with business-like efficiency.

Instead, Franklin's Nittany Lions suffered the most shocking FBS-on-FBS upset in recent memory, digging themselves a 27-7 hole at halftime that they couldn't quite climb out of in a 42-37 loss. A Bruins offense that hadn't been able to do anything all season long was suddenly pushing Penn State around in the trenches: UCLA rushed for a whopping 269 yards, including 128 and three touchdowns from much-maligned QB Nico Iamaleava.

"Embarrassing" doesn't quite cover it. Throughout Franklin's tenure, the easiest argument for keeping him was that he always, without fail, avoided faceplants like Saturday. To lose to this UCLA team, in this particular spot, feels like an existential crisis.

And yet, in our brave new 12-team Playoff world, a team's season is rarely if ever over in early October — even a team that now has as many losse) as it does wins over FCS opponents this year (2). Penn State has put itself fully behind the 8-ball here, but while the Big Ten title may already be out of reach, competing for a national title may not be. The Nittany Lions will need hree-a whole lot to go right, though.

Penn State's margin for error is zero after loss to UCLA

We can safely extrapolate from how last season played out that it's going to be very hard, if not impossible, for a three-loss team that doesn't win its conference title to earn a Playoff spot. That's doubly true if said team has a loss on its resume as bad as Penn State's loss to UCLA, one that will hang around this team's neck for the remainder of the season.

Realistically, if Penn State wants to snag one of the at-large spots, they're going to have to find a way to go from 3-2 to 10-2. With two conference losses already working against them, even that probably wouldn't be good enough to get to the Big Ten Championship Game (although they would have tiebreaker advantages over both Ohio State and Indiana in this hypothetical). But a Nittany Lions team that once again finds a way to get to double-digit wins would probably stack up pretty favorably to other teams on the bubble — especially considering what's still to come on the schedule.

Remaining schedule is both a blessing and a curse for Penn State's CFP hopes

If ever there were a time for Franklin to figure out how to kick his big-game bugaboo, it would be now. Penn State will head back home to take on Northwestern in what should be a layup (although at this point, who knows) before traveling to Iowa City to take on an Iowa team that's always dangerous at Kinnick Stadium. And then the real fun begins: Penn State will travel to Columbus to take on Ohio State and then welcome No. 8 Indiana to Happy Valley in consecutive weekends to begin November.

The good news is that there are two opportunities for statement wins there. Ohio State is a heck of a pelt to put on the wall, and Indiana's scorching start has increased their standing in the national consciousness as well. Win both of those, as well as other respectable games like at Iowa and at home against Nebraska, and suddenly the resume doesn't look all that bad.

That bad news, though ... well, you probably already know what the bad news is: Penn State actually has to win those games, and Franklin hasn't given anyone any reason to believe he's capable of doing so. There's been so much chaos with the SEC (Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee all already have one loss, while Texas now has two after falling to Florida), Big 12 and Notre Dame so far that the bubble figures to be there for the taking. But it's on the Nittany Lions to do so, and after Saturday, it's hard to take that idea very seriously.