James Franklin and Penn State lose the big one, again, to Ohio State. If not Saturday, when?

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — James Franklin stood with his arms folded near Beaver Stadium’s midfield and waited. They sing the alma mater, win or lose, at the end of every game, and the Penn State team stands at the south end zone in front of the student section.

But Franklin waited as the last of his players finished shaking hands with their Ohio State opponents, taking it all in. Then he started his walk toward the end zone, where he put his arm around his daughter and swayed. The music was playing, but the singing was half-hearted.

Franklin’s third-ranked Nittany Lions lost again to No. 4 Ohio State, this time 20-13, and because Franklin is now 1-10 vs. the rival Buckeyes, the sad singing and swaying is more than a familiar feeling here.

It was hard to come away thinking anything else but this: If not Saturday, when?

Penn State took a 10-0 lead in the first quarter after an interception by Zion Tracy was returned 31 yards for a touchdown and sent the crowd into a frenzy. But the Nittany Lions were outscored, 20-3, the rest of the way. They didn’t score an offensive touchdown. This, in what arguably was the biggest game of Franklin’s tenure, with the eyes of the college football world — ESPN’s College GameDay and Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff included — trained on State College.

The song ended, and Franklin turned back toward the sideline. He greeted the dozens of recruits Penn State invited to campus to be part of the revelry. Then it was time to leave the field through the south tunnel, where a few students waited to heckle the coach who is in his 11th year leading the football program. Franklin stopped, asked for a specific student’s name, and then questioned the male student’s manhood for not responding.

Franklin was not asked during his seven-minute postgame press conference about the exchange, but was asked what his message was to a tortured fan base, some of whom had expressed themselves with boos, others with thrown objects after the clock hit zero.

“I understand their frustration,” Franklin said. “Guys in the locker room are just as frustrated, if not more, but college football has changed, and we have an opportunity moving forward to right some wrongs from today, and that’s what we’re going to focus on. I get it. We have an unbelievable crowd here. We get unbelievable support. You don’t do that without passion, and there’s great things that come from that, and there’s hard things that come with that. And that’s part of the job, and I own it all.”

Franklin owns an offense that had the ball inside the Ohio State 5-yard line twice and couldn’t score, including a crucial series late in the fourth quarter; an offense that was paced in rushing yards by a tight end and completed three passes to a wide receiver. He owns a defense that at times got schooled by Chip Kelly’s offensive schemes for Ohio State, which were tailored toward Will Howard’s inefficiencies and allowed the former Downingtown West quarterback to shine. He owns the undisciplined penalties that extended drives.

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He also owns what happens next. In other seasons, Saturday’s loss would have been crushing. But the expanded College Football Playoff offers hope, however hopeless it seemed at 4 p.m. Saturday. Penn State (7-1, 4-1 Big Ten) closes with four games against unranked opponents. It likely will be favored in all four. Winning out almost certainly would guarantee the Nittany Lions a home playoff game, and there seems to be more parity at the top of the leaderboard than ever before.

“We can’t allow one loss to turn into two,” Franklin said. “The reality of college football is everything is still ahead of us, and we have to do a great job of making the corrections, eliminating the things that were unforced errors that happened today, and then we have to find a way to get a win next week at home [vs. 4-4 Washington], and everything is still in front of us.”

Penn State quarterback Drew Allar, who was solid Saturday on his injured knee but not good enough, said “it’s a long season” and knows there’s still time to do the things the Nittany Lions want to do.

“I have confidence in our process,” Allar said. “I have confidence in our coaching staff. I have confidence in Coach Franklin, the leader that he his.”

It has been a rocky 10 days for Franklin, the leader. After rape charges were filed against two former players, he refused to answer questions last week and ceded a microphone to a Penn State athletics communications staff member following a practice instead of issuing statements himself as the face of the program who makes $8.5 million per year — an action for which he apologized a few days later after Penn State won at Wisconsin.

Then came Saturday, in what seemed like his best chance to finally get over the hump, with one of the best teams he has had. But the largest crowd in Beaver Stadium history, 111,030, watched it end the way it always seems to end, and Franklin’s last actions on the field were to respond to a heckling student rather than walk up the tunnel.

Franklin is now 4-17 against Ohio State and Michigan.

» READ MORE: Penn State’s Drew Shelton blocked for Will Howard at Downingtown West.

“There’s nobody that’s looking in the mirror harder than I am,” he said. “I will say this, and I’ve said it before: 99% of the programs across college football would die to do what we’ve been able to do in our time here … but I also understand when you’re at a place like Penn State there’s really, really high expectations. I get it. I totally get it.

“We’ve looked at all these things really hard. We’ll continue to look at these things really hard. There’s a lot of things that I had planned on saying when I came in here today, but they are not appropriate to say right now, so I will hold them until another time.”

Which, again, begs the question: If not Saturday, when?

Sometimes the obvious things are better left unsaid.