Notre Dame vs. Penn State

By the end of the 1973 college football season, Ara Parseghian had done it again. Seven seasons after leading his Notre Dame football squad to the 1966 national championship, Parseghian led his Irish to victory over #1 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, securing his second national title, and the school's first perfect season since 1949.

While Parseghian enjoyed his second national title, Joe Paterno, Penn State's head coach since 1966, had completed his third perfect season in eight years as the Lions' head coach. And, for the third time, Paterno's Lions had failed to win the national title. Because of Penn State's notoriously soft schedules in those days, the Lions were left out in the cold when the final polls came out each year.

Paterno, who also served as Penn State's athletic director for a number of years, realized that the weakness of his schedules had to be addressed. Part of the solution came in the form of the very school that deprived Penn State of the national title in 1973. At the end of the 1976 season, Notre Dame met Penn State in the Gator Bowl. Although Notre Dame defeated Penn State, 20-9, the game rekindled a long-dormant series, sowing the seeds for a series renewal that would help define both programs in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Prior to the Gator Bowl, the schools had only played four times between 1913 and 1928, with Notre Dame chalking up a 3-0-1 record in those games. Despite a 48-year hiatus, however, the bowl game generated tremendous interest among the fan bases of both schools. As two proud football independents, a future series seemed like a match made in Heaven. Following the game, Paterno and the legendary Edward "Moose" Krause, Notre Dame's longtime athletic director, started discussions into scheduling a series between the schools. They agreed to an ambitious twelve-game series that would commence in 1981. . . .

Notre Dame and Penn State are two of college football's traditional powers, which makes the brief pre-1981 series history all the more surprising. The schools first played in 1913 at New Beaver Field in State College. Notre Dame won that first game, 14-7, and went 4-0-1 in the first five games in the series. The Lions would not register their first win in the series until 1981, when JoePa's boys defeated Gerry Faust's Irish, 24-21. Overall, the Irish hold a tenuous lead in the series with a 9-8-1 record overall.

The Lions dominated the series throughout most of the 1980s, winning six of the first seven games after the series was revived. Notre Dame finally got back on track by winning in back-to-back seasons against Penn State in 1988 and 1989. The Irish win in 1988 was the home finale of that season's national championship team, while the Irish win at State College in 1989 was the final victory in Notre Dame's school-record 23-game winning streak. Penn State rebounded in 1990 and 1991 with two more victories over the Irish.

In 1992, the curtain was falling on the series that had helped to define the two programs for the past 12 seasons. Penn State would join the Big Ten Conference the next year, but made one final trip to South Bend to play as a football independent against Notre Dame. Played in temperatures just below freezing with snow falling periodically throughout the game, the game was tense, as both teams struggled to score in the wintry conditions. Trailing 16-9 late in the game, Irish QB Rick Mirer led a late drive, culminating with a TD pass to RB Jerome Bettis. Still trailing 16-15, the Irish opted to go for the win. The resulting play, a scrambling pass from Mirer into the hands of a diving Reggie Brooks, instantly became one of the most famous plays in school history. The successful two-point conversion gave the Irish a 17-16 win before sending the series back into another dormant period.

The series resumed last year in South Bend. On a bright sunny day that was the complete opposite of the last time the teams had met, Brady Quinn and the #4 Irish pounded the #19 Nittany Lions, 41-17. It was the most convincing win in the series since the Lions registered a 30-point win over the Irish in 1985.

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Other notes:

-Notre Dame has won four out of the last six games in this series, dating back to 1988.

-Saturday's game will be the first in the series since 1988 in which one of the teams is not ranked.

-Saturday will mark Notre Dame's first visit to Beaver Stadium since 1991. That year, the #12 Irish fell to the #8 Lions, 35-13, in one of the worst losses in the Holtz Era.

-State College has not been kind to the Irish, historically. Since Knute Rockne led them to victory there in 1926, the Irish have won there only once. In 1989, the #1 Irish won at Beaver Stadium, beating the #17 Lions, 34-23. Overall, Notre Dame's record at the current Beaver Stadium is 1-5.

-Among current Division I-A schools, Notre Dame and Penn State rank #2 and #10 in all-time winning percentage and #2 and #7 in all-time wins, respectively.

-Penn State's mascot, the "Nittany Lion," is a reference to the mountain lions that once roamed Mount Nittany near the campus of Penn State University.

-Last Saturday's 33-3 Irish loss at home to Georgia Tech ranks as the worst season-opening loss in the 119 seasons of Notre Dame football. The previous worst season-opening loss came in 1976, when the #11 Irish lost by 21 at home to #9 Pittsburgh.

-Saturday's 30-point defeat was also the sixth worst home loss in school history.

-A loss on Saturday would give the Irish four consecutive losses for the first time since 2001. That streak started with a Fiesta Bowl loss to Oregon State, and included losses at Nebraska, at home to Michigan State, and at Texas A&M.

-Jimmy Clausen is slated to become the first true freshman to start at QB for the Irish since Brady Quinn at Purdue in 2003.

-Charlie Weis is 8-1 (.889) in road games. His first loss on the road was last season's finale at Southern Cal.

-These teams are currently not scheduled to meet again.

-In the ongoing competition between Michigan and Notre Dame for college football's all-time best winning percentage, here is where things stand after last week:

#5 Michigan lost at home to I-AA powerhouse Appalachian State, 34-32, dropping their record to 860-283-36 for a winning percentage of .7447. It was the first time that a I-AA school had ever defeated a ranked I-A school. This week, unranked Michigan hosts unranked Oregon.

Unranked Notre Dame lost at home to unranked Georgia Tech, 33-3, dropping their record to 821-270-42 for a winning percentage of .7432. This week, unranked Notre Dame travels to #14 Penn State.

Michigan's lead remains at 15/10,000ths of a point.

One final note about last weekend: it marked the first time since 1934 (and only the second time EVER) that Notre Dame and Michigan both started their seasons with a loss.

This week's game kicks off at 6:00 EDT on ESPN.

Go Irish! Beat Lions!

Big Mike

copyright Michael D. McAllister 2007