Penn State comes into the 2025 season as one of the best teams in the country. Head coach James Franklin has a loaded squad, and that’s despite losing Abdul Carter and Tyler Warren to the NFL.
This offense gets Drew Allar, Nic Singleton, and Kaytron Allen all back, and then the defense has Dani Dennis-Sutton up front, who is ready to take over the dominant spot off the edge. The most significant question mark facing the Nittany Lions was their wide receiving corps, and they improved on that, adding Syracuse transfer Trebor Pena.
Pena entered the Transfer Portal and reported a money dispute between him and Syracuse. He wanted the Orange to pay him up to $2 million in NIL, which was so high that Syracuse head coach Fran Brown publicly announced the request in a local radio interview.
However, Penn State head coach James Franklin recently disputed some factors behind Pena’s transfer from Syracuse to Penn State.
Franklin spoke with the media recently, and when discussing Pena’s contributions, he shifted his focus to the narratives about why Pena transferred.
“I’m also glad because, much of the stuff was publicly put out? None of it was true, you know, about how his transfer took place and why it took place. And a lot of the financial descriptions of how that played out? None of those things were true regarding Penn State,” said Franklin. “At least based on our experience, they were nonfactors.”
“I probably shouldn’t have said none of those things were true. They weren’t true based on our experience and what we dealt with in terms of what his deciding factors about coming to Penn State were,” Franklin later added.
Trebor Pena had big season with Syracuse football
Pena was with the Orange for five seasons, playing in 41 games and starting 14. He finished with 109 catches for 1,212 yards and 10 touchdowns, returning 91 total balls, 55 punts, and 36 kicks, for 1,414 yards total and a touchdown, bringing him to 2,723 all-purpose yards and 11 total scores in his career.
Despite spending five seasons with the Orange, Pena only broke out last season thanks to a revamped offense and the rise of Kyle McCord under center. He became a star thanks to that, and that’s also why Penn State came calling, noticing his impact on the game.
The Nittany Lions might not have paid him $2 million to get him to Happy Valley, but he got a pay raise, and thanks to life in the Big Ten, he has an opportunity to have an instant impact on an offense that desperately needed help through the air.
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