Editor’s note: Mike Poorman’s coverage of Penn State football returns. His column will appear every Thursday until the start of the 2010 Penn State football season.
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Four national championship games in nine seasons. That’s where Penn State football was in the years leading up to joining the Big Ten Conference in 1993.
Pre-BCS, Penn State played in what was in essence college football’s national title game four times from 1978 to 1986. Four times — puts modern-day Florida, Southern Cal and LSU into perspective, doesn’t it?
In less than a decade, the pre-Big Ten Nittany Lions won two national championships, beating Georgia for the 1982 crown and Miami (Fla.) for the 1986 title. And they almost won two more. Penn State entered bowl games following the 1978 and 1985 seasons ranked No. 1, but losses to Alabama (1979 Sugar Bowl) and Oklahoma (1985 Orange Bowl) thwarted its title hopes.
Still, when Penn State was being considered for Big Ten Conference membership in the late 1980s, no college football team was riding higher.
Penn State began playing football in the Big Ten in 1993, and now has 17 league seasons under its belt. In light of the admission of Nebraska into the conference, it’s a good time to take a closer look at the Nittany Lions’ move into the Big Ten – football-wise, on the field.
TOP 5: THEN AND NOW
In the 17 seasons prior to joining the Big Ten, the Nittany Lions were a staple in the Top 5 of college football. Seven times in 17 seasons Penn State finished the season ranked among the nation’s Top 5 — the elite of the elite. In the final polls, it had finishes of 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 4 and 4.
By comparison, only twice since they joined the Big Ten have the Nittany Lions finished in the Top 5 — No. 2 in 1994, No. 3 in 2005.
Interestingly, during both 17-year stretches Penn State had 13 Top 25 finishes. With the exception of 2000-2004, Penn State has played top-notch football since joining the Big Ten, but has rarely cracked the nation’s elite that is the Top 5.
THIRD IN THE BIG TEN
The lower finishes in the polls is due in part because the Nittany Lions have not come out of the Big Ten wars unscathed. Only once (1994) did Penn State go undefeated in the Big Ten, and twice it lost only one conference game. Overall, the Nittany Lions have won or had a share of the Big Ten title three times – once every five or six years. That’s less than most folks figured when Penn State joined the Big Ten.
And it pales in comparison to Ohio State, which has had at least a share of 10 Big Ten championships since 1993. Michigan has won five, while Wisconsin has won three. Penn State ranks third in league victories since 1993, going 85-50 (.629), while Ohio State is 105-29-1 (.781) and Michigan 94-41 (.696), despite just three wins in the past two seasons.
Wisconsin is most similar to Penn State, with an 81-53-1 mark (.604). Iowa, a PSU nemesis, is 70-64-1. A case can be made that Penn State made everyone in the conference better.
‘Penn State’s entrance into the conference caused everyone else to take a long, hard look at their programs,’ says Penn State veteran broadcaster Steve Jones. ‘I think Penn State’s entrance made everyone else step it up a notch, and that is why eight different schools have had at least a share of the title in the last 17 years.’
Penn State has used a relatively weak non-conference and a predilection for beating up the weak sisters of the Big Ten to erect a 147-62 overall record (.703) since 1993. That includes a non-conference record of 61-12 and a 57-11 mark against the cellar-dwellers of the Big Ten – the modern-day version of 1970s/1980s punching bags West Virginia, Maryland, Syracuse and Temple (although the latter two have also been recent foes).
Two-thirds of Penn State’s conference victories have come against the bottom five of the Big Ten — Indiana (13-0), Michigan State (13-4), Illinois (11-2), Northwestern (10-3) and Purdue (10-2).
On the other hand, just one-third of its conference wins have come against the other five teams in the league — Ohio State (6-11), Michigan (5-10), Iowa (5-8), Wisconsin (6-6) and Minnesota (7-4). It’s a much tougher group. And it’s a desultory 29-39 record (.426).
From 1976-1992, Penn State won three out of four games, with a 153-49-2 record (.755 winning percentage).
BOWLS AND ALL-AMERICANS
In bowl games, Penn State has fared much better recently. The Nittany Lions are 10-3, while from 1976-1992 they were 9-6. Even that is misleading, since four times in the pre-Big Ten period they were playing for the national title, and eight of the contests were in major bowls (Sugar, Fiesta, Orange) vs. four while in the Big Ten (including two Rose Bowls in 17 years).
It would appear the quality of players – or, at least the acknowledgement of such – has dropped a small bit. From 1976-92, 24 Lions were named first team, and counting multiple winners, there were 31 winners. In the Big Ten, the numbers have been 20 and 23. An astounding 13 of the last 15 Nittany Lions selected as first-team All Americans have been from the defense – all along the defensive line or at linebacker.
Over the past five years, the Nittany Lions have been in the Top 10 three times and held a share of two league titles with a 4-1 bowl mark and a 51-13 record – albeit with a Coastal Carolina-laden non-con schedule.
The rebound from the down years of 2000-2004 has vaulted Penn State into new territory. And has put it on a higher plain.
‘As we started our downward spiral, the Big Ten community lumped us as a weakling from the East that couldn’t cut it with the big boys,’ says Penn State sports historian Lou Prato. ‘That started to turn around with the 2005 season and now, in 2010, our athletics program is lumped together with OSU and Michigan, even more so than Wisconsin and Iowa. That’s not just in football but other sports, particularly the women sports.’
Adds Jones: ‘In a tough and balanced conference Joe Paterno and his staff did what some did not think was possible. They not only came back from 2000-2004, they won the conference title twice. Joe’s winning percentage in the last five seasons, 79.7 percent, is higher than his career winning percentage of 74.9 percent.
‘In a conference where everyone seems to talks about Michigan and Ohio State the reality is the winner of the Penn State-Ohio State [game] has won the conference championships in each of the last five seasons.’
Having said that, though, Ohio State is still the gold standard, having won a share of the Big Ten title the past five years and six times in the past eight seasons.
The Lions were 31-9 in their first five seasons in the Big Ten, finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd three times in the conference standings. So, the first five-year bookends of conference play are consistent with the most recent five-stretch. All good.
WHAT IF?
By now, you have to be thinking, ‘What would have happened if Penn State had never joined the Big Ten? They’d still be playing for national championships left and right.’
Unlikely.
Who’s to say what would have happened if Penn State had not joined the Big Ten? There most certainly would have been big changes for all of Penn State sports. And the major college football landscape had already started changing by the time the Nittany Lions kicked off against Minnesota in their first Big Ten football game, a 38-20 victory in Beaver Stadium on Sept. 4, 1993.
In 1990, SEC commissioner Roy Kramer convinced Arkansas to leave the Southwest Conference and then persuaded South Carolina to join the league. That gave the SEC a 12-team league and its own conference championship game all the way back in 1992.
Given the start of a seismic shift – granted, precipitated in part by Penn State’s joining the Big Ten – it is unlikely that Nittany Lion football could have survived and thrived as an independent over the past two decades.
‘First, no one knows what would have happened to the conference realignments back then if Penn State had not gone into the Big Ten,’ says Prato. ‘That was the ignition for all the changes that followed. Saying that, if Penn State had remained an independent the last 17 years and had had the same type of seasons in football and basketball, there would have been major financial problems in the athletics department. That could have led to some of the other varsity sports being dropped as well as other cutbacks behind the scene in facilities and personnel.’
But there were other, positive, off-the-field consequences of Penn State’s entry into the Big Ten.
Notes Prato: ‘Another impact is the enhancement of Penn State’s image as an academic institution as well as its athletics program. You see that in how Graham Spanier is considered one of the leaders in the Big Ten as well as in the nation’s academic circles. I believe that helped all the fund raising that has been done. Certainly, being involved in the Big Ten has helped PS’s entire academic program. We hear that all the time from the academics. What that has done for the football program may not be noticeable on the surface, but I think it has been useful in recruiting.’
And adds Jones: ‘For Penn State the Big Ten meant enlarging Beaver Stadium, and building Lasch Building, the Bryce Jordan Center and Medlar Field. All of which were needed to continue to compete in the Big Ten facilities war.’
For Nebraska, the entry into the Big Ten wars should be easier than Penn State’s. As Jones points out, the vote to admit the Cornhuskers was 11-0. Penn State, however, met some resistance and got in on a 7-3 vote.
The Nittany Lions have done a pretty good job of evening the score ever since.
