This Saturday’s contest in Beaver Stadium is not your father’s Penn State-Nebraska game.
Or your grandfather’s.
What’s past, it seems, is barely prologue these days.
And in the Big Ten Conference these days, it seems that with some schools East is East, and West is West, and (almost) never the twain shall meet.
Only six current Penn State players were even on the Nittany Lions’ roster on Nov. 23, 2013, the last time Big Ten brethren Penn State and Nebraska met in football. The Cornhuskers won, 23-20, in overtime in Beaver Stadium, when the visitors made a 47-yard field goal after Sam Ficken failed on a 37-yarder.
The very next week, Penn State upset No. 14 Wisconsin, 31-24, in Madison, in what was Bill O’Brien’s last game as Penn State’s head coach.
Since that last meeting between Penn State and Nebraska, the pair of traditional college football powerhouses — especially from the 1960s to the late 1990s — have headed in opposite directions.
Penn State has had a 34-17 record, and a recent 17-3 run, all under head coach James Franklin except for that win over Wisconsin.
Nebraska, meanwhile, is 10-10 over its last 20 games and has been 29-22 since that 2013 contest, first under Bo Pelini and now Mike Riley — with a third new head coach likely to come in the near future.
And, lately, “has been” seem to be the operative words.
LIFE OF RILEY
Over the last three seasons, Riley has been 6-7, 9-4 and 4-6 (in 2017) at Nebraska. He is not long for Lincoln.
The Cornhuskers have to win on Saturday in Beaver Stadium and the next week at home against Iowa to qualify for a bowl game. It’s been 10 years since Nebraska last missed a bowl game.
What a fall it has been for proud Nebraskans:
Shawn Eichorst, the athletic director who hired Riley, was fired in September. Bill Moos was named AD in October. Riley may be gone before the end of November. And perhaps Mike Leach, who worked for Moos at his last stop, Washington State, will be the new Husker coach in December.
Meanwhile, at Penn State, this is how much things have changed over the past half-hundred games or so:
Among the nearly five dozen coaches, staffers, doctors and trainers who support the Penn State football program in 2017, only 10 or so were working with Penn State football back in 2013.
(That group includes athletic Tim Bream, academic advisor Todd Kulka, video coordinator Jevin Stone, strength and conditioning assistant Dwight Galt IV, grad assistant Matt Fleischacker, team physicians Scott Lynch and Peter Seidenberg, admin assistants Dianna Weaver and Angie Hummel, and Letterman’s Club director Wally Richardson.)
And no one in the aforementioned Penn State’s group of super-seniors — DaeSean Hamilton, Curtis Cothran, Parker Cothren, Brendan Mahon, Andrew Nelson and Brandon Smith — dressed back when Penn State and Nebraska played in 2013.
So give most of the Penn State team some leeway these days if they know little of Nebraska football, a program that ranks fourth all-time in victories (893), owns five national titles, has had three Heisman Trophy winners, has been to an NCAA second-best 53 bowl games and plays in Memorial Stadium, which has been sold out every game since Nov. 3, 1962 — a streak of 360 consecutive sellouts.
“I actually don’t know too much about Nebraska,” said Hamilton on Wednesday, days before he was to take the field for the first time against the Huskers. “Coach Franklin touched on it, Coach (Joe) Moorhead touched on it a little bit — that they have a lot of history like Penn State does. But I don’t know too much about Nebraska.”
WINNING IN THE BIG TEN, 1-0 BY 1-0
Hamilton does know the following about Saturday’s Senior Day opponent. As does Franklin.
In their respective tenures at Penn State, both player and coach have beaten every team in the Big Ten Conference. But Nebraska.
There’s a reason for that.
“I haven’t played against them. I know that much,” Hamilton said. “But other than that, I don’t know that much about them.”
Franklin, to his credit who has worked hard to become a student of Penn State football history since his arrival in January 2014, knows a lot more.
On Tuesday, Franklin said, “When I think of Nebraska, I think growing up, I look at Nebraska in a lot of ways, a lot of similarities to a Penn State — tremendous history, tremendous tradition and pride. One of those types of programs that you view that way.
“Kind of studying these teams like we do, we are kind of surprised Nebraska leads the all-time series 9-7. They’ve won the last four games against Penn State, which was also something that was probably surprising to me. So we want to chip away at those two things.
On Wednesday, Franklin — the self-proclaimed “Pennsylvania boy with a Penn State heart” — elaborated on that recent steak of Nebraska success.
“I grew up in the state and I know Penn State’s history and tradition and things like that,” he said. “Sometimes when I look at series, I’m shocked sometimes. That’s no disrespect to Nebraska, they have an unbelievable program and an unbelievable tradition. But I was surprised that they have a winning record against us. I’m still learning about this place every day as well. Each week, as we play new teams that come on the schedule — like Nebraska. I learn about their history with Penn State.
“I don’t focus on those things during the season,” he added. “but I look at those things in the off-season. I look at Penn State’s records against opponents and I’d like to chip away (at them). I’d like to retire from here and have been- able to swing some of those things at some point. Those are the kind of things I look at in the off-season and study from a historical perspective and those sorts of things that we take pride in.
“I do want to understand the picture and teams we’ve had good records against and teams that we’ve struggled against. I’d like to have a positive impact on all of those things before we leave here.”
SERIES HIGHLIGHTS & LOWLIGHTS
In some ways, then, long gone is the 1982 classic in Beaver Stadium, with two TD catches by Stonehands Bowman and the clutch sidelines catch of a Todd Blackledge toss by tight end Mike McCloskey.
(Watch McCloskey making the reception late in the game, inbounds by…an…inch, here.)
That was so long ago that these days McCloskey’s daughter, Megan is an even better leaper than her dad. She’s a senior high jumper at her pop’s alma mater, with a best of 5-foot-11.5, which is second-best in Penn State history.
That 27-24 victory by No. 8 Penn State over No. 2 Nebraska may have been Penn State’s finest hour in Beaver Stadium, according to no less authorities than Lou Prato and the late, great Fran Fisher, as the two of them ranked the win on Sept. 25, 1982 — which led to Penn State’s first national title — as the biggest in stadium history. (Check out those rankings here.)
But then came the Grant Haley’s scoop-and-score vs. Ohio State in 2016, that catapulted Penn State (back) into a new (old) orbit and may have supplanted the ’82 Nebraska-Penn State thriller as the top game in Beaver Stadium’s 58-year history.
Fran, God rest his soul, was not around to see it. (Although he was no doubt watching from a skybox with his beloved Charlotte.)
As for Prato, the morning after Haley’s comet, he picked up the phone and gave me a call. “It’s still Nebraska,” were the first words out of his mouth. See what I mean about your grandfather’s Penn State-Nebraska game?
Then there was the Nittany Lions’ epic 44-7 loss the next August in the Kickoff Classic. Forgotten. For good reason.
But who can forget Penn State’s resounding 40-7 victory over No. 8 Nebraska in 2002, before 110,753 — the largest crowd in Beaver Stadium history? (Actually, it was the largest. This year’s 42-13 Whiteout win over Michigan now has the stadium attendance record, at 110,823. Nebraska is No. 2.)
There was the Nov. 12, 2011 Penn State-Nebraska game. Joe Paterno was fired just days earlier in the wake of the Sandusky scandal and longtime defensive coordinator Tom Bradley was named Penn State’s interim head coach. In a pre-game scene like none witnessed before or since in Beaver Stadium, the two teams gathered at midfield for a group prayer. Nebraska won 17-14, but the game — the first time the two teams met as Big Ten Conference foes — was anti-climatic.
In 2012, Penn State made its first trip to Lincoln as a Big Ten member. And, if you listened to quarterback Matt McGloin afterwards, it was a game that the Big Ten wanted Penn State to lose.
The scene: After Nebraska took its first lead of the game at 27-23 with 10:57 to play, McGloin found tight end Matt Lehman inside the three-yard line. As Lehman stretched the ball to try to cross the goal line, he was hit and the ball popped out. The play was ruled a fumble, which the Huskers received for a touchback. Instead of a 29-23 Penn State lead, the Huskers went on to score and win, 32-23.
Afterwards, McGloin had this to say:
“We’re not going to get that call ever, against any team,” McGloin growled. “It doesn’t matter who the referees are.”
When pressed for further comment, McGloin added, “Why do you think it is? Write what you think.”
Thus, on Saturday, we write on.
