Penn State Dominant Against the Spread Under James Franklin

James Franklin hasn’t delivered a College Football Playoff berth in his nine seasons as Penn State head coach, though the nation’s 10th-longest-tenured head coach has delivered a healthy return on investment (ROI) to the Nittany Lions’ weekly spread bettors.

Penn State is 74-32 outright in the regular season under Franklin’s tutelage. While that winning percentage (.698) is good enough for the 15th-best in college football, it’s not good enough to be profitable on the moneyline.

Franklin’s ATS (against the spread) record, however, is more than good enough.

If you bet on the Nittany Lions’ spread in each of the 106 regular-season games over Franklin’s nine seasons, you’d be profitable with the fifth-best ROI among all FBS programs from 2014-22.

Only Utah, Kansas State, Washington State, and Temple have a better ROI than Penn State (9%) over that time. If you remove Franklin’s first two seasons — 2014 and 2015, when they went a combined 9-14-1 ATS —  the Nittany Lions rank first at 19%.

If you bet $100 on the Penn State spread in each of their 84 regular-season games since 2016, you’d be up approximately $1,500. No other Big Ten team would’ve delivered more than $600 in profit over that time.

Here are other spread betting notes from Franklin’s nine regular seasons:

Home games: 33-25-3 (.566)

Road: 21-19-2 (.525)

Non-conference games: 15-9-2 (.615)

Conference: 41-36-3 (.532)

When ranked in the AP top 10: 16-11-1 (.593)

Ranked between 11-25: 22-12-1 (.647)

Unranked: 18-21-3 (.462)

Against AP top-10 teams: 7-9 (.438)

11-25 teams: 6-6 (.500)

Unranked: 43-30-5 (.583)

When favored: 44-33-4 (.568)

Underdog: 12-12-1 (.500)

As of June 29, Penn State is a 19.5-point favorite over West Virginia in Week 1 college football odds at the BetMGM online sportsbook. If you don’t have an account, check out BetMGM’s sports betting promotions for a welcome offer.