A spirited Big Ten rivalry is downshifting for the immediate future.
Fans may take it for granted three decades into Penn State's Big Ten existence, but the Nittany Lions and Ohio State are a bit of an odd couple. While both are land-grant schools, the Buckeyes play in a major metro area; Penn State is smack in the middle of Pennsylvania.
The Nittany Lions have a quilt of Eastern and Midwestern quasi-rivals—Maryland, Michigan State, Pittsburgh and others—while Ohio State only These tensions have helped create a great series—one that will come to an end on a regular basis after this year. Following their Saturday matchup, Penn State and the Buckeyes will not meet again until 2028.When the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten in 1993, conference schedule-makers wasted little time in ensuring that Penn State and Ohio State played every year—never mind the two teams' relative lack of history with one another. They'd played eight times as non-conference foes, with the Nittany Lions winning the first four and the most recent in the 1980 Fiesta Bowl. In terms of manufacturing a rivalry, the gambit worked. "Only Ohio State-Michigan, with its lengthy history, tops Penn State-Ohio State in the Big Ten,"wrote as early as 1996. When the Big Ten added Nebraska in 2011 and introduced divisional play, the Nittany Lions and Buckeyes were joined at the hip—first in the ill-fated Leaders Division and then in the East. However, the Big Ten is even bigger now, and when it came time to hash out a future schedule in Oct. 2023, the conferencerivalries. Therefore, barring unforeseen circumstances, 2026 will be the first year where Penn State and the Buckeyes don't play since 1992.Patrick Andres is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He joined SI in December 2022, having worked for The Blade, Athlon Sports, Fear the Sword and Diamond Digest. Andres has covered everything from zero-attendance Big Ten basketball to a seven-overtime college football game. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with a double major in history .
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