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Instead, the Lions will reprise two of the less-storied rivalries from their Eastern Independent days. They will end their 2017 and '18 seasons against Maryland and their 2019 season against Rutgers. The proximity of those schools means that there's some raw material with which to build genuine rivalries. They'll be competing with the Nittany Lions for recruits and media attention, and because their graduates are scattered throughout the Mid-Atlantic states, fans of the three schools will be mingling at sports bars and office cubicles year-round, not just at stadiums on game day. However, they've got a combined record of 3-57-1 against Penn State, and their checkered history has dimmed some of the excitement over the Big Ten's eastward expansion. In a perfect word, Penn State would wrap up its season against a rival with the Top 25 cache of this week's opponent, Wisconsin, and the geographic proximity of its new Big Ten rivals, Rutgers and Maryland. Will the Terrapins be able to fill that role? They do have a bit of history with their neighbors to the north, but not enough to inspire great anticipation for the resumption of the series. Except for Penn State's 20-18 upset victory against the seventh-ranked Terps in the 1985 season opener and a bizarre 13-13 tie at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore four years later, you'd be hard-pressed to remember any single moment from the 37 games the teams have played. The last time Penn State faced Maryland, in 1993, it came away with a 70-7 victory. And Rutgers? The Scarlet Knights have come a long way since Penn State last faced them in 1995. Back then, they were perennial Big East stragglers, playing games before disinterested crowds in a stadium that held only 41,500 fans. But they invested $102 million in an expansion project that raised the capacity to 52,454, pumped another $12.5 million into the adjacent football building and gave coach Greg Schiano use of a helicopter to impress prospects on re- cruiting visits. Since 2005, the Knights have suffered only one losing season. But Schiano has gone off to the NFL, and even with its enhanced facilities, Rutgers will still have the Big Ten's thirdsmallest football stadium. Most Penn State fans will no doubt prefer trips to Piscataway, N.J., and College Park, Md., to those day-long treks to the Midwest, but it's possible – maybe even likely – that the Nittany Lions and their new conference rivals will settle back into familiar roles once PSU's sanctions end. If that's the case, then fans won't embrace these restored series any more passionately than they embraced the prefab rivalry with Michigan State. "I think it's possible that over this next generation, with Maryland and Rutgers in the Big Ten, that they could become our big rivals," Prato said. "But they have to compete. Maryland has only one win and one tie in that series, and Rutgers is building." I Don't strike up the band just yet.

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