At least one team was ranked in the top 10 in eight meetings from 1976-86.
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The Panthers will travel for their first road game of the season next week, as they’ll make their way to Stillwater to take on the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
Tomorrow, for the first time in 16 years, Penn State University and University of Pittsburgh’s football teams will play each other, reviving a storied inter-state rivalry. Unfortunately for the Nittany Lions both of those weird things happened when it mattered the most, and that’s why Pittsburgh won.
A strong Pittsburgh running game had the Penn State defense on its heels the entire game. “The Pitt guys were taken aback”. But a third-down sack by linebacker Quintin Wirginis — the first of his career — prevented the Lions from tying the game up, as Penn State settled for a 38-yard field goal to cut the Pitt advantage to four with 12:04 remaining.
The two teams have played a total of 96 times since 1893, which makes for more matchups between the two schools than Auburn and Alabama, Florida and Tennessee, USC and Notre Dame, and Florida State and Miami.
“You don’t want me to talk about being a young football team, people don’t want to hear that”, said head coach James Franklin after the game. “I hope the game it good”, Kaspernik said.
He wanted his players to understand the rivalry, to know it was important. “It was exciting. It was a thrill”.
A bit of an odd debut for Penn State’s veteran group. PSU S Marcus Allen just missed the pick on the play.
While Narduzzi will search for answers to how and why Penn State was able to storm back in the second half, turning a blow-out into a nail-biter, the Pitt coach was pleased with most of what he saw from his offense. He said that the win staked Pitt’s claim as the class of Pennsylvania. “Dorsett was a great player, and [coach Johnny] Majors was recruiting like insane”. The expectations for them were really high.
Pennsylvanians can take the pledge to end sexual assault at governor.pa.gov/its-on-us/.
Penn State’s presence as a power helped Pitt’s 1976 undefeated team gain enough credibility to earn a Sugar Bowl bid and clinch the national championship. Players swirled towels on the sideline throughout the game, and the fans filled up the student section before the players even donned their pads.
Penn State fell behind early Saturday against Pittsburgh. Whitehall grad Matt Millen preserved the win by stopping a two-point conversion with 10 seconds left.
Down 21 – 35, the defense clamped down while the offense cleaned up its game, which slowed down Pitt’s running attack. Penn State will play Michigan, Ohio State, Iowa and Michigan State. In fact, when she was just a day old, Jupena said her father showed her Pitt’s campus and told her “look at the school you’re never going to go to”.
“It’s exciting”, Mr. Sirianni said of the rivalry game.
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Another pivotal mistake on the next drive for Penn State, as on the move into Pitt territory, Barkley was stripped by the Panthers who also recover the fumble. The 48-14 win remains burned in Blackledge’s memory. While Franklin opted to regard it like any other game so his players would remain level-headed – and they did, as they almost rallied from a three-TD deficit – Narduzzi embraced this game as much as the fans. “I know logistically that may not be feasible, but to me, one of the greatest things about college football and the thing that sets it apart from the NFL is rivalries”.
