STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Penn State football is one of the most iconic brands in the sport. They won a couple of national championships under the legendary Joe Paterno, and there are safe arguments to be made that they could have claimed a few others as well.

A Beaver Stadium football weekend is a great experience, a bucket list item for sure. They are one of the game's truly great programs. Not the best, maybe not even top-five all time, but they are a great program for sure.

But now they are a mess. 

The Nittany Lions, ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press preseason poll this year after winning two games and reaching the semifinals in last year's inaugural College Football Playoff, have lost five straight Big Ten games and are 3-5 on the season.

They lost to No. 6 at the time Oregon in double overtime at Beaver Stadium, which was unfortunate but at least understandable. Veteran coach James Franklin has never been able to win big games.

But then Penn State lost to UCLA and Northwestern, bottom of the barrel Big Ten teams, and athletic director Pat Kraft had seen enough. He fired Franklin, despite six years — and $49 million — left on his contract.

James Franklin, as is turned out, couldn't win the little games, either.

“I take full responsibility for all of it,” Franklin said after the Northwestern loss. “I hired all the staff, I recruited all the players. I believe in all of them. But we’re not getting it done right now.”

Franklin was fired the next day, concluding a 12-year career at Penn State where he went 104-45 and just 64-36 in his 100 Big Ten games. He won one conference title (2016) and zero national championships.

Since then, long-time assistant and popular interim coach Terry Smith has lost two more games, losing at Iowa by a point and at No. 1 Ohio State by 24, though it was close at halftime.

Now the Nittany Lions come back home for Smith's first home at Beaver Stadium, with a Noon ET kickoff. Awaiting them are the Indiana Hoosiers, a program that Penn State has owned through the years with 25 wins in 27 games against the Hoosiers. They have NEVER lost to Indiana at Beaver Stadium, winning all 13 games.

That's complete domination. 

But all of that is ancient history. This is a complete role reversal now. Indiana is 9-0 and No. 2 in the country in this week's AP top-25 poll, the highest ranking in school history. They are 6-0 in the Big Ten, in first place a half-game ahead of No. 1 Ohio State, who's only played eight games.

Indiana has started 9-0 in two straight seasons, something that they've never done before. The Hoosiers have been playing football since 1887 and have lost more games (719) in college football than anyone.  They have only had four nine-win seasons in school history and two of them have happened in the past two seasons under Curt Cignetti, a Pennsylvania native who has directed the most amazing turnaround in college football history.

And that is not hyperbole.

The Hoosiers, if you need reminding, went 3-24 in the Big Ten during Tom Allen's final three seasons from 2021 through 2023. Cignetti is 14-1 in Big Ten games, with three to go, Saturday at Penn State, home against Wisconsin next weekend and at Purdue on Friday, Nov. 28.  

Cignetti's uncharted success at Indiana has gotten him two contract extensions — and massive raises — in two years. And he's done it despite the school history. Here's a weird fact: Cignetti is the ONLY Indiana football coach with a winning Big Ten record.

He's got Penn State to thank for the second one.

When Franklin was fired, Cignetti's name was the first one to be brought up. He's from Pennsylvania, which made sense, and he's proven to be a great college coach. Everyone just assumed that this would be a no-brainer, that Cignetti would leap at the chance to leave lowly Indiana for elite Penn State.

Replacing Franklin with Cignetti had the Penn State fan base excited.

But on the day of Franklin's firing, Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson walked into Cignetti's offer and said they needed to talk about a new deal. Cignetti said sure, and to call his agent. In a matter of hours, Cignetti had a new eight-year, $93 million contract, making him one of the highest-paid coaches in the country.

Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft never got the chance to talk to Cignetti because Dolson beat him to it. Kraft, it's been said, was really disappointed because he's marveled at what Cignetti has done at Indiana. He's watched it all very closely, because Kraft is an Indiana grad himself, and a former Hoosiers football player.

So his coaching search had to move forward without his preferred first choice.

Cignetti will coach his first game at Beaver Stadium on Saturday, and he rides into town with what many think is the best team in the country. He doesn't care one bit about Indiana's history there because, as he often says about Indiana's horrid past, ''I wasn't here for any of that.''

That 0-13 record at Penn State truly doesn't mean a thing. Franklin is gone, Penn State quarterback Drew Allar is lost for the season because of an injury and Indiana has NFL prospects all over the field.

Sort of like Penn State usually does.

How reversed are the roles? Well, Indiana is a 14.5-point favorite over Penn State, and this is the first time ever that they've been favored in a game here. Indiana should win — and win big — although there's still a lot of pride in this Penn State group, and there are five times as many four- and five-star recruits on Penn State's roster than there is on Indiana's.

The times, they are a changin'.