ESPN had this game circled 53 weeks ago.
‘We’ll be back next year for the Penn State-Ohio State game,’ Judi Weiss said the weekend of last year’s 28-21 White Out victory vs. Michigan and GameDay stop on the HUB lawn.
‘And,’ she said, ‘we’ll be back at Old Main,’ which was undergoing renovations at the time.
Weiss, a Penn State grad who has degrees in Liberal Arts, Film and Russian studies, is the senior remote operations producer for ESPN’s college football traveling road show.
This game has been this big for that long.
Only now, maybe not so much…
As Weiss called it, GameDay is, indeed, back in town — for the fourth consecutive season, making Penn State the only school to host the show each and every season since 2016, and ninth time overall.
But — gee thanks, Covid — Weiss & Co. will be ensconced safely inside Beaver Stadium for their 9 a.m. to noon must-watch Saturday morning preview of college football.
The contest between No. 3 Ohio State and No. 18 Penn State will still be on ABC prime time at 7:30 p.m., with Chris and Herbie calling the action.
So…it is still a big game.
Throw in the fact that it is Halloween, a full blue moon, with a campus of #40k students yearning for a win of any sort, and a series…hmmm, not quite a rivalry…that has been separated by three or less points in the past four seasons, and — maybe — the hype is real.
Dig a bit deeper though, and the odds are on Ohio State’s side. The Buckeyes are an 11-point favorite and a win by twice that much would not be a huge surprise.
Why? No Noah Cain. No Journey Brown. (No Ricky Slade, Justin Shorter or Wild Dog czar Sean Spencer, for that matter.) No Micah Parsons. No Jesse Luketa for the first half. No White Out and no best student body in college football. No wins and one loss for Penn State in 2020 after a no-error-free game at Indiana.
And no rivalry, says Penn State D-tackle Antonio Shelton, who is a native of Columbus, Ohio.
“First of all, it’s not a rivalry,” Shelton said this week. “We’re not Michigan. People are trying to make this something — I don’t want to say bigger than it is — we’re a good team. They’re a good team as well. So, I can understand how people would try to make it something like that. And by me saying it’s not a rivalry, that’s not me downplaying our opponent or disrespecting Ohio State in any way, because I’m not the type of person to downplay my opponent. That’s not smart.
“But I don’t necessarily think that is a rivalry. This is two good football teams who are playing each other. That’s it. They have great players. We have great players. It’s great coaches on both sides. Both programs are very historic, very storied programs. It’s just two good football teams who get to play each other on Saturday.”
HISTORY: WHAT OHIO STATE MEANS
Having said that,
this game is not The Game, not in the way that the 24-21, 39-38 and 27-26 contests were in 2016, 2017 and 2018. My, that seems so long ago.
Where have you gone Trace and Saquon? Nittany Nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Saturday night is more of a benchmark game, exactly what James Franklin was alluding to in his Good, Great, Elite statements in 2018.
Ohio State leads the series 21-14 and is 19-8 since Penn State entered the Big Ten in 1993. Which means that in pre-conference play, the Nittany Lions hold a 6-2 edge.
Penn State’s success, or lack thereof, against The Ohio State University is more of an indication of where Nittany Lion football is at rather than vice versa.
In 1964, Penn State’s 27-0 upset of No. 2 Ohio State in Columbus, the year Joe Paterno was named associate head coach, was a flash of what to come in Happy Valley in just a few years, with Paterno building upon in the foundation of his mentor, Rip Engle.
In 1978, when the fifth-ranked Nittany Lions went to Columbus and beat No. 6 Ohio State and its freshman quarterback Art Schlichter — who almost signed with Joe instead of Woody — was indication that they were a team to be nationally reckoned with. That came true, as Penn State was voted No. 1 for the first time in the regular season polls, before falling to Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
In 1980, in its only bowl game against a Big Ten foe, Penn State defeated Ohio State 31-19 in the Fiesta Bowl. Counting that game, Penn State went 22-3 over the next two seasons, with end-of-season rankings of No. 8, No. 3 and No. 1. (I think it is the best stretch of Penn State football. Ever.)
In 1994, Penn State’s second season in the Big Ten, it thoroughly crushed the Buckeyes in Beaver Stadium, 63-14, its most lopsided victory of a 12-0 season.
In 2005, with the rains falling and the Beaver Stadium (again) faithful standing the entire contest, the Nittany Lions and Paterno pronounced themselves officially back when Tambi Hali and his teammates, ranked No. 16, stood the sixth-ranked Buckeyes on their heads, 17-10.
In 2008, on the road in Columbus, Penn State’s defense held the Buckeyes to just six points on Penn State’s way to the Rose Bowl and a 22-4 run.
In 2011, under interim head coach Tom Bradley, the Nittany Lions proved that — despite a scandal — Penn State football was not dead, as they wildcatted their way to a 20-14 victory.
In 2012, Penn State football did look almost DOA, as first-year Buckeye head coach Urban Meyer put his foot on the gas pedal and never let up, as Ohio State crushed a visiting Penn State, 63-14 (the same score as that 1994 game).
Which brings us to…
2016, and the Grant Haley scoop-and-score that gave Penn State its epic 24-21 victory and catapulted them on a 38-9 win-loss run that ended last week in Bloomington.
That week I was part of a conversation involving Haley, Saquon Barkley, Mike Gesicki and Trace McSorley, where each was confident their team could beat then-second-ranked Ohio State, a 30-23 OT winner the week before against Wisconsin in Camp Randell.
They knew they could win. They not only felt it and said it, they did it.
OPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE
It’s hard to think the Nittany Lions feel that way headed into the weirdest big game in, perhaps, Penn State football history.
In his Zoom press conference on Wednesday, Penn State head coach James Franklin used the words ‘challenging’ and ‘opportunity’ extensively. For the Nittany Lions, it is both.
Which reminds me of a Franklin PowerPoint slide I have seen a number of times in differing circumstances since he arrived in 2014. Franklin flashes OPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE on the screen. Just those letters in a big, fat font.
‘What do you see?’ he asks. Then the coach shows it again, two ways:
OPPORTUNITY IS NOWHERE
and then
OPPORTUNITY IS NOW HERE
No doubt, Penn State’s opportunity is now here. Again. This may not the truest test of where Penn State is as a program vis-a-vis Ohio State, due to covid and injuries. But, the Buckeyes did dominate at The Horseshoe last November, winning handily 28-17 in what was another Big Game. And Buckeyes did sign wide receiver and PA high school phenom Julian Fleming out from under Penn State’s nose last December.
Ohio State seems poised to be on another roll this year, and with a decisive loss Penn State could enter a minor spiral. (The Nittany Lions have had back-to-back losses only twice since 2016, both times to Michigan and Ohio State.)
In a covid year, everything is accentuated and exaggerated and you feel it twice as much. So why not with college football?
2020 is an anomaly, is in so many ways a big asterisk. Will Saturday accentuate an increasing gap between Ohio State and Penn State?
Or, with Penn State as a decided underdog, will the Nittany Lions put the grit of Sean Clifford and the meticulous planning of James Franklin on display and produce their biggest win since October 22, 2016?
No matter how you look at it, then, Saturday night is a big game.
