For the second time since joining the Big Ten, Penn State will see its manufactured rivalry with Michigan State interrupted by conference expansion.
Sponsor: FTB’s Donors Club – the most direct way to support our efforts – is back for another year! (sad Sarah McLachlan music plays) For $9.99 you can feed a starving blogger…and get a cool FTB bottle koozie in return! JOIN HERE.
For longtime fans who remember Penn State football’s roots as an Eastern independent, the program’s place in the Big Ten has always felt a little awkward. But 2023 marked the Nittany Lions’ 30th season of conference competition, meaning full generations of Lions loyalists have grown up knowing nothing but B1G membership for their beloved Blue and White. For most of that time, fans young and old could count on two things at season’s end: Michigan State and freezing cold. Starting last season and looking ahead, however, while the weather will be lousy as ever, the opponent will be different. Penn State’s annual season-ending matchup with the Spartans, which was conceived out of the evolving conference landscape, has now become a victim of it.
Yet through most of State’s years in the Big Ten, Sparty loomed as the final obstacle to overcome, a gatekeeper guarding the path toward regular season glory, bowl position, and occasionally, a conference championship. In spite of this seemingly prime position on each’s year slate, the series never managed to generate much enmity on either side. Over nearly three decades, fans of both teams certainly grew accustomed to seeing one another at season’s end, but this familiarity never bred much in the way of contempt. Other opponents, notably Michigan and Ohio State, generated more publicity and hate, and neither teams’ players nor their fans ever circled late November on the calendar. Bona fide rivalries in college football are funny things, and if 22 (soon to be 23) season finales between Michigan State and Penn State can teach us anything, it’s that they cannot be engineered.
