As Penn State coach James Franklin took the podium in Indianapolis on Wednesday morning as part of Big Ten media days, he wasn’t afraid to voice a subtle jab regarding how the Nittany Lions’ scheduling luck — or lack thereof — has unfolded in the league office.
“We’ve had pretty good practice over the last nine years of opening the season in the Big Ten on the road,” Franklin said in his opening statement. “So we’re looking forward to that opportunity.”
To contextualize Franklin’s point, entering his ninth year at Penn State, the Nittany Lions have opened Big Ten play at Beaver Stadium just once — in 2015 against Rutgers. Other than that Penn State has traveled on the road to start conference play for seven-straight years, with a pending trip to West Lafayette to face Purdue in the coming weeks.
“That stinks. I did deal with that,” new Penn State Athletic Director Patrick Kraft told reporters after Franklin’s press conference. “I called our friends in the conference, who I love dearly. That’s not right.”
How much the league office really listens to Franklin and Kraft will remain to be seen. After all, Penn State has lost a Big Ten opener just twice in the last nine years, once at Michigan in 2016 and then in overtime facing Indiana at the outset of the COVID-19 impacted 2020 season. Otherwise, the Nittany Lions have managed to come away with victories by margins like 59-0 and 63-24 since 2018. Nevertheless it’s hard to argue against the idea that opening on the road – let alone opening on the road on effectively an annual basis — is a simple task. This is especially true as Penn State looks to open the season at-large on the road against a Big Ten team for the third-straight year.
For comparison since 2014, Ohio State has opened Big Ten play on the road five times, interestingly enough with three of those games coming against Indiana. The Buckeyes will open Big Ten play this season in Week 4, hosting Wisconsin.
Penn State’s season openers and Big Ten openers.
- 2014: UCF in Ireland (at Rutgers)
- 2015: at Temple (vs. Rutgers)
- 2016: Kent State (at Michigan)
- 2017: Akron (at Iowa)
- 2018: App State (at Illinois)
- 2019: Idaho (at Maryland)
- 2020: at Indiana
- 2021: at Wisconsin
- 2022: at Purdue
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