Is Penn State-Ohio State a rivalry? Nittany Lions, Buckeyes are still torn

The Big Ten is the only conference in the country with three top-10 teams, and all will play each other. The first of the three highly anticipated matchups is Saturday when No. 7 Penn State visits No. 3 Ohio State, the latest big game in a series that has delivered plenty of drama and memorable moments.

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This installment of Penn State vs. Ohio State has no shortage of storylines. Penn State quarterback Drew Allar went to Medina High School in Ohio and was named the state’s Mr. Football in 2021. Ohio State didn’t initially recruit Allar because it had Quinn Ewers in the 2022 class. Ohio State reached out once Ewers reclassified, but Allar wasn’t interested — he was committed to Penn State.

“I did grow up going to Ohio State games like a lot of us did in Ohio,” Allar said. “They got a great fan base, a great atmosphere. It’s gonna be a very challenging atmosphere. They’re a very passionate fan base, but you know, I think it’s nothing we’re not prepared for. We practice in very loud environments all the time.”

Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord of Philadelphia’s St. Joseph’s Prep was recruited by Penn State before Ohio State got in the picture. He was at the 2018 matchup at Beaver Stadium but chose Ohio State over the Nittany Lions.

“If you live in that Pennsylvania, New Jersey area, Penn State is the school everybody dreams of going to,” McCord said. “I’ve been to a bunch of Penn State games. I was there in 2018, in the White Out game when Dwayne (Haskins) led them back. They were probably my No. 2 choice, but when coach (Ryan) Day gave me the green light to commit, there was really no doubt that this was the place to be given his track record.”

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Though Penn State is 1-8 against the Buckeyes under James Franklin and Ryan Day has yet to lose in the series, most of the games have been tightly contested.

Thirty years after Penn State joined the Big Ten, one question remains: Is this a rivalry?

Ohio State is the one Big Ten team Penn State has played every season since joining the conference in 1993, and this is the 11th time they’ll meet while both ranked in the AP top 10. But the Buckeyes’ biggest rival will always be Michigan. The Big Ten is eliminating divisions after this season, and the Penn State-Ohio State game wasn’t declared a protected rivalry, meaning it won’t be played every year going forward. They will play in 2024, 2025 and 2028 but not 2026 and 2027.

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The Athletic surveyed some of the players and coaches involved with the series in recent years to ask their thoughts on what’s materialized between these two Big Ten East foes and where it is a true rivalry.

Ohio State-Penn State history

Recent memorable moments

2005: Penn State 17, Ohio State 10

The No. 16 Nittany Lions announced their return to national prominence by upending No. 6 Ohio State, 17-10. In a moment that will forever live in Penn State lore, Tamba Hali ended Ohio State’s comeback bid with his strip sack of Troy Smith. With 1:28 left and Penn State clinging to a seven-point lead, Hali’s hit — which flipped Smith upside down on his head for a split second — ignited the Beaver Stadium crowd.

“I’ve never heard (Beaver Stadium) louder,” former Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Bradley said. “Hali sacks him and the ball is just laying there and I swear to you it feels like I’m in slow motion going, ‘(Scott) Paxson, fall on the ball!’ It was like, ‘Why does the guy with the shortest arms have to be reaching for the ball?’ When you look at the ball, it’s like the ball laid there forever. It was crazy.”

2014: Ohio State 31, Penn State 24

Ohio State traveled to Beaver Stadium for what former Ohio State linebacker Joshua Perry called the “greatest environment in college football, a Penn State White Out.”

Ohio State dominated the first half, taking a 17-0 lead into the break, but an Anthony Zettel pick six in the third quarter changed the momentum and the Nittany Lions scored 17 consecutive points to send the game into overtime.

Both teams scored a touchdown in the first period. The second overtime began with a J.T. Barrett touchdown run and ended with a Joey Bosa sack of Penn State quarterback Christian Hackenberg.

Perry lined up to blitz but dropped into the flat to cover a throw that Hackenberg wanted to make. He hesitated, and that left Bosa unblocked until he drove running back Akeel Lynch right into Hackenberg for the sack.

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“The tackle turned to block me, Hackenberg tried to throw hot where I was, he can’t do it and the running back is like, ‘S—, I have this dude, ’and the rest is history,” Perry said.

For Tyvis Powell, who intercepted Hackenberg in the third quarter, that was one of the best games he played in.

“That s— was unbelievable,” Powell said. “It was like a movie.”

The win jumpstarted Ohio State, which had lost to Virginia Tech that September, on its national championship run in the first year of the College Football Playoff.

“We didn’t think we were a championship team at that point,” Perry said. “We were a team just trying to find ways to consistently win ball games. That was a huge one.”

2016: Penn State 24, Ohio State 21

Another White Out at Beaver Stadium brought a classic game. No. 2 Ohio State led 21-7 entering the fourth quarter before unranked Penn State came storming back to cut the score to 21-17.

Despite the early deficit, Penn State quarterback Trace McSorley said the team felt different than in 2014.

“It was one of those types of feelings surrounding that game — and not kind of like some of the other ones, like in 2014, where we had no business and it was like, ‘Hey, we’re hanging with these guys. Let’s keep going!’” McSorley said. “This was more of like, ‘We can beat them. We’re gonna win this game.’”

Ohio State, leading by four with under five minutes to play, lined up for a 45-yard field goal by Tyler Durbin. It was blocked by Marcus Allen and returned for a touchdown by Grant Haley.

The Buckeyes had one drive left and never got back to Penn State territory, giving Franklin his first win over Ohio State and Penn State its first win in the series since 2011.

“I remember that night leaving the stadium, I’m trying to get back to my apartment and I’m driving through downtown and it’s just a mob scene of people in the streets. I was trying to get through it and all the people were blocking the street. I literally couldn’t go through,” McSorley said. “There were no other cars there, so I just started to creep through, and as I’m starting to creep through I see police horses come flying by. It was wild.

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“Monday, when you go back to class, there definitely was a little bit of a different energy. People were still excited about what happened that weekend. It felt like people on campus were enjoying it, having fun. I don’t want to say that they were necessarily shocked about it, but I remember going into a couple classes and they had stuff about Penn State beating Ohio State on the PowerPoint in the big lecture halls and stuff like that. There definitely was an energy around campus about the game and beating them.”

Seated in the crowd that night was 11-year-old Ethan Grunkemeyer. He was decked out in Ohio State gear after his family of Buckeyes fans made the trip to Beaver Stadium. Little did the aspiring football player know, as he watched fans storm the field, that one day he’d commit to Penn State as a four-star quarterback in the Class of 2024.

Grunkemeyer’s family bought tickets for this Saturday’s game, and the QB commit plans to wear blue and white.

2017: Ohio State 39, Penn State 38; 2018: Ohio State 27, Penn State 26

The air was sucked out of The Horseshoe when Saquon Barkley returned the opening kick 97 yards for a touchdown in 2017.

No. 2 Penn State jumped out to a 21-3 lead against No. 6 Ohio State as the home crowd fell silent. The lead was 28-17 at the half and 35-20 by the end of the third quarter as the Nittany Lions tried to put themselves on a path to the national championship. Instead, J.T. Barrett led a furious comeback with three touchdown drives in the fourth quarter. Barrett’s 16-yard touchdown pass to Marcus Baugh gave Ohio State a 39-38 lead it wouldn’t relinquish.

Ohio State fans stormed the field, some even posing for photos with Barkley as he walked off.

“If we beat them, there’s a good chance we would’ve ended up potentially moving all the way up to No. 1 at that point,” McSorley said. “You never know what happens from there. Maybe we don’t lose to Michigan State and then we’re looking at the Playoff and stuff like that. That’s more the one that gets talked about more. All the guys, when we’ll all get back together, that’s the one that gets brought up the most.”

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It felt like deja vu in 2018 when No. 9 Penn State lost to No. 4 Ohio State by one point again, this time in Beaver Stadium.

Penn State jumped to a 13-0 lead, but Dwayne Haskins, J.K. Dobbins and the Buckeyes stormed back. Haskins’ two touchdown passes in the final seven minutes stunned the home crowd. Still, Penn State had a chance to win. With 1:22 remaining, Penn State moved across midfield. McSorley, who was masterful with 25 rushes for 175 yards, approached the line. Fourth-and-5 became a punchline in Happy Valley rather than a moment of triumph, as McSorley handed off to Miles Sanders, who was drilled for a two-yard loss.

In his postgame news conference, Franklin emphatically declared his team “great,” but not yet “elite” — a statement that has continued to follow Penn State through what’s now a six-game losing streak in the series entering Saturday.

“I don’t think he was necessarily wrong,” McSorley said. “We had just lost to them two years in a row by one point. At the time, yeah, they were winning the Big Ten pretty much every year. They were always in the Big Ten championship. That was kind of the measuring stick. It was like we need to beat these guys during the regular season to be able to be in the Big Ten championship and things like that.

“I think that was more of a credit to Ohio State and what they’ve been able to do over the last decade. They’re always in that conversation of a Playoff team, being in the Big Ten championship more often than not, and won it probably more often than not. That was just kind of where we were as a program. We had done it in 2016 and hadn’t quite been able to do it consistently. I think that’s where it was like, ‘Yeah, we’re a great team, but the elite teams can consistently do it over and over again, year after year.’”

So: Is Ohio State-Penn State a rivalry?

Saquon Barkley, former Penn State running back: I would say, yeah. I feel like after my freshman year, I would say definitely. When we beat them (in 2016), and the next year, we should have beat them. We stormed the field when they came to Penn State. And then when we went there and we lost, they stormed the field at us to let us know how they felt about that.

Anybody who I talk to that played at Ohio State, Michigan just started getting really dominant again, so that rivalry has obviously always been a rivalry that’s been good, but for a short couple years, it’s really more Penn State-Ohio State, who’s gonna be the one to come out of the Big Ten? So I definitely believe it’s a rivalry, and I feel like the tides are gonna start to change with the team we have this year.

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Garrett Wilson, former Ohio State wide receiver: Yeah, only because the rest of the conference is pretty weak. So yeah. You got Michigan and you got Penn State.

That’s one of those games that you know you’re going to get hit. I remember I got knocked around that game, my sophomore year, first time playing against them. They got a great team, they got good corners always. They’re physical. They hold, they f—ing hold the whole game. They teach it. But they’ve got a good squad. That’s a rivalry.

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Coaches confidential: Penn State or Ohio State? And can either beat Michigan?

Trace McSorley, former Penn State quarterback: I never remember thinking that it was a rivalry game — more so, you got two storied programs in the Big Ten that play each other every year and generally you’re gonna get a very good game out of it, or at least a very competitive game.

Dawand Jones, former Ohio State offensive lineman: No, they are not a rival. They’re more of a little brother.

Sean Clifford, former Penn State quarterback: No. The way that we preach the whole “unrivaled” thing, at least internally, no. Maybe externally, like the fans, definitely see there’s true competition there, potentially a rivalry in the future. But internally, it’s not enough. One-and-oh is the mantra, so no.

Tyvis Powell, former Ohio State safety: Nowadays I do, but back when I played I didn’t because we kind of handled them very well. They played it really close the last five or six years, so secretly, yes, it has become a rivalry.

Tom Bradley, former Penn State defensive coordinator: It’s not Penn State-Pitt. It’s not Ohio State-Michigan. It’s not USC–UCLA. There have been some great games though. I started to think back on it and there were some rough ones out there, but also some great ones. The one game that still sticks with me is (2008) when Lydell Sargeant picked off the pass (from Terrelle Pryor) to win the game and we beat them 13-6.

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Joshua Perry, former Ohio State linebacker: I think when the new Big Ten schedule came, out a lot of people were like Ohio State-Penn State should’ve been a protected rivalry, and I don’t necessarily disagree with those people. I understand why you would want to free up Ohio State and Penn State for scheduling purposes and to create paths for teams to make the expanded playoff. … I used to see those games as really important games. I know our coaches felt like it and I know the players and coaches on the opposing side felt like it. The fan base did, the administrations did. It felt like a rivalry. … It’s not always about the traditional nature of the rivalry. … I think in terms of importance, coaches, players and fan bases will tell you how they feel about a specific matchup — and Penn State felt like that for us.

James Franklin, Penn State head coach:  To me, that word is different. I think there seems to be a lot of people trying to create those things, and it’s funny because when I first got to Penn State, they were having this discussion about “unrivaled.” Well, why? Well, we’re not an original Big Ten team. We were independent for a long time. Then you join the conference and people try to create rivalries that really weren’t there. Just like everybody wanted to tell me about our rivalry with Pitt, which I agree with geographically, but literally up until we played them a few years ago, none of our players had ever even seen a Penn State-Pitt rivalry game in their lifetime. I just think these games are important. They’re big games. They’re important for the Big Ten. They’re important for our teams, individually as well. But, to me, there shouldn’t have to be discussions on is this team a rival or not. If they’re a rival, everybody knows they are.

Marvin Harrison Jr., Ohio State wide receiver: Yes. I think it is a rivalry game. I don’t know all the history, but I know the games have been close and come down to that fourth quarter and one team pulls away from the other. With the goals we’re trying to accomplish, making a Big Ten championship, Penn State is one of those teams year in and year out to reach that goal.

Ethan Grunkemeyer, 2024 Penn State QB recruit from Ohio: It’s always kind of been Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan. There’s kind of been a rivalry between those three. I grew up watching those three. Penn State has always kind of been in the last few years one of the teams that’s had an opportunity to knock off Ohio State. Just watching those games kind of put into perspective that I’m gonna have the opportunity to be on a PSU team that plays on that stage.

— The Athletic‘s Matt Schneidman, Charlotte Carroll, Zack Rosenblatt and Zac Jackson contributed to this story.

(Top photo of Marvin Harrison Jr.: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)

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