Since coach Franklin arrived in Happy Valley two winters ago,his motto has been “Unrivaled”. What he means by that is no one can compare to his Nittany Lions on the field, in the class room, and in the recruiting process, but is that the truth? If you asked the average Penn State fan who the Lions rivals were, they might say Ohio State or Michigan but if you asked a fan of those two teams who their rivals were, you wouldn’t get many Penn State answers. Yes, Penn State has played some great classic games with those two schools but, it has never been much of a bad blood rivalry.
In a two part series, I will discuss who Penn State’s rivals are at this time.
1. Maryland- If you watched last year’s game, you know why, the Terps decided to start a bad blood rivalry by not shaking hands at the coin toss and then winning the game. Daesean Hamilton said it himself, “We won’t forget”. Recruiting has also added to this new rivalry, for years Penn State has dominated the Maryland area and despite what a Maryland fan might tell you, facts are that Penn State still dominates that area. The rivalry continues on October 24th in Maryland, but it’s being played at a neutral site at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.
2.Pitt- The two teams haven’t faced off since 2000 when Pitt won 12-0. Penn State leads the series 50-42-4 and the teams will meet for the first time in 16 years on September 10th 2016. This rivalry has been mostly off the field and well to be honest, on Twitter. Twitter is the newest recruiting asset and Pitt and PSU are 2 of the biggest users. James Franklin’s motto “Dominate the State” doesn’t sit well with Pitt. I’ll discuss how the two fan bases have a had a year long Twitter fight that seems to only heat up and what we can expect in 2016.
Stay tuned this week as we go through the rivalry mini series starting with Maryland.
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