Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1472993
1 0 A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M I n 1966, Joe Paterno's first season as head football coach at Penn State, his team traveled to UCLA and was handed a 49-11 loss by the fourth-ranked Bruins. It would only have been a 42-11 loss, but UCLA coach Tommy Prothro called for an onside kick in the final minute. The hosts recovered the ball from the dumbfounded Nittany Lions and tacked on one last touchdown, giving PSU another indignity to stew about on the long flight home. As he left the Rose Bowl, Paterno was fuming. He might still have been fuming when he recounted the episode years later in his autobiography. "I remember walking down the field with Mickey Bergstein, our radio broadcaster, to do a postgame interview with him," Paterno wrote. "I said, 'Mickey, I'm going to get that son of a bitch. If it kills me, there's going to be another day.' " As it turns out, there is going to be another day. Maybe a lot more days. On June 30, the college sports world discovered, much to its collective surprise, that UCLA and USC were set to join the Big Ten. The two Pac-12 fixtures, schools with great legacies in football, basketball and the Olympic sports, will become full members of the Big Ten in 2024. The particulars of how those schools will be incorporated into the conference's football scheduling model had not been announced as of early July, and with good reason: The Big Ten might not be done growing. Penn State Embracing Big Ten's Westward Expansion M A T T H E R B | M A T T . H E R B @ O N 3 . C O M NEWS & NOTES Penn State last faced USC in the 2017 Rose Bowl, falling to the Trojans 52-49 on a last-second field goal. USC will be joining the Big Ten in 2024 along with UCLA, a team that the Nittany Lions haven't faced since 1968. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL