Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/847744
P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> 2 0 1 7 S E A S O N P R E V I E W CHALLENGE ACCEPTED T H E S C H E D U L E Big games abound as the Lions look to build on their breakthrough 2016 season I f you watch the tape very, very closely, you'll see a Penn State player pull an Ohio State lineman out of the way on the decisive play in last season's meeting between the two Big Ten pow- ers. The lineman ends up sideways, cre- ating an opening that Marcus Allen leaps through, blocking Tyler Durbin's field goal attempt and setting in motion the chain of events that ultimately leads to a 24-21 upset victory by the Nittany Lions. You know who watched that tape very, very closely? Urban Meyer. And he was- n't happy. "You're not allowed to pull a guy away, launch across and land on one of our guys," the Buckeyes coach said during his weekly news conference a few days after the game. The grumbling in Columbus that fol- lowed Penn State's victory last October echoed some of the complaints that Nit- tany Lion fans had leveled two years ear- lier when a pair of officiating blunders led directly to 10 Buckeye points in what would turn out to be a 31-24 victory by the visitors. Ohio State fans didn't have much sympathy at the time, and their disinterest in revisiting the game's out- come was most definitely reciprocated by PSU fans this past year. In short, none of the grumbing mattered in the least. Except in this way: The missed calls and shoulda, coulda, woulda recrimina- tions have helped inject some passion into a rivalry that had seemingly been on the downswing. Prior to James Frank- lin's arrival at Penn State in 2014, one of the more contentious aspects of the game was the question of whether it was a rivalry at all. Nittany Nation insisted that it was; Buckeye Nation said it wasn't. To the Scarlet and Gray hordes, Penn State was just another opponent to be vanquished on the way to a major bowl invitation or national champi- onship shot. The Buckeyes had gone 7-3 against Joe Paterno during the last decade of his tenure, and they fared even better against the sanction-depleted teams of the Bill O'Brien era, outscoring Penn State 98-37 in two comfort- able wins. But Franklin has turned things around. His un- dermanned team took Ohio State to double over- time in his first season, and while the Lions suffered a 38-10 loss the follow- ing year on the road, they rebounded with last season's upset over the then-No. 2 Buckeyes, one of the most significant victories of the post-Paterno era. For obvious reasons, Penn State will never be public enemy No. 1 in Colum- bus; that particular honor will always go | IF THE 'SHOE FITS Penn State will visit Ohio State on Oct. 28 in hope of winning for the first time in Colum- bus since 2011. The Lions have gone 2- 10 in the Horse- shoe since joining the Big Ten. Photo by Fenstermacher Photography