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Who is Penn State's current rival?

Who is Penn State's current rival?

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Ranger Dan

Ranger Dan

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Aug 31, 2003
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I was chatting with a guy yesterday after giving his son a hard time for wearing a Michigan shirt. He asked who our rival was. and suggested Penn. I said that he probobly meant Pitt, but they aren't really a rival anymore since we don't play every year. I said that we may consider tOSU a rival, but compared to Michigan, tOSU doesn't feel the same way. We talked about the big ten trying to fabricate rivalries with MSU, Nebraska (weren't they a guaranteed cross over game for a year or two?), and now MD and Rutgers.

Does Penn State need a true rival to succeed? when we won our MNC, we had Pitt as a clear rival. When we have had great teams since then (94, 99, 05, 08, 16), either we lacked something that allowed us to close out against inferior teams or the perception of our team was lacking.

Are there any top CFB teams out there that compete for national championships that don't have a real rival? Alabama has Auburn, tOSU has Michigan, etc.

Is playing a team every year a requirement for a rivalry? For example: arr Texas and Texas A&M still rivals?
 
I'll vote Ohio State --- just because that (along with any suggestion that Urban Meyer was considering PSU back in 2011) seems to increase some Buckeye fans' blood pressure by a factor of 5.
 
one of the great disappointments with the B1G is their insistence on maintaining the "Big 2" of tOSU and UM. While we have a better record against tOSU than UM in the last ten years, we are still relegated to being a second tier B1G team. That has caused us to not develop a rivalry. So I don't think we have one.

tOSU would say UM, Um will say tOSU. To be a true rivalry, both teams have to recognize the other as their rival, IMHO. The B1G tried to make it Sparty. Then, they are trying to make it Rutgers or Maryland. So far, non-starters unless UM make great headway under their new HC.
 
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I always thought, due to history, we could have had an incredible rivalry with Nebraska.
 
Ranger Dan said:
I was chatting with a guy yesterday after giving his son a hard time for wearing a Michigan shirt. He asked who our rival was. and suggested Penn. I said that he probobly meant Pitt, but they aren't really a rival anymore since we don't play every year. I said that we may consider tOSU a rival, but compared to Michigan, tOSU doesn't feel the same way. We talked about the big ten trying to fabricate rivalries with MSU, Nebraska (weren't they a guaranteed cross over game for a year or two?), and now MD and Rutgers.

Does Penn State need a true rival to succeed? when we won our MNC, we had Pitt as a clear rival. When we have had great teams since then (94, 99, 05, 08, 16), either we lacked something that allowed us to close out against inferior teams or the perception of our team was lacking.

Are there any top CFB teams out there that compete for national championships that don't have a real rival? Alabama has Auburn, tOSU has Michigan, etc.

Is playing a team every year a requirement for a rivalry? For example: arr Texas and Texas A&M still rivals?
Click to expand...

Does Clemson have a main rival? ..... South Carolina, Florida State maybe?
 
It has to be Michigan State. Both sides go into the season with two goals in mind: #1 - winning a national championship, #1a - bringing home the coveted Land Grant Trophy.
 
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Rivalries aren't manufactured. They're organic and grown as much out of respect as heated competition with much to play for. This is why I don't see Pitt as a rival even though I grew up 20 minutes from Oakland in the hay day of the PSU/Pitt series. There's a vileness here that's not rivalry as much as a WWE meets tabloid sideshow.

With parents and most of my entire extended family being originally from Columbus I know the OSU/Michigan game very well. Even thought the dislike is quite palpable, there's also a level of mutual respect that has probably never been a trait of PSU/Pitt.

The only thing Pitt brings to PSU from an organic rival perspective is proximity. That's it. Get rid of state borders and we have more competitive series with Syracuse and Army over the past 60 years.
 
CF LION said:
Does Clemson have a main rival? ..... South Carolina, Florida State maybe?
Click to expand...
If you don't know the answer to that one - you've never spent much time in SCar

Clemson-SCar is as bitter a rivalry as Bama-Auburn

Just doesn't get they attention nationwide because they have rarely both been good at the same time.
 
bjf1991 said:
If you don't know the answer to that one - you've never spent much time in SCar

Clemson-SCar is as bitter a rivalry as Bama-Auburn

Just doesn't get they attention nationwide because they have rarely both been good at the same time.
Click to expand...

And you're probably not much of a CFB fan in general.
 
Ranger Dan said:
I was chatting with a guy yesterday after giving his son a hard time for wearing a Michigan shirt. He asked who our rival was. and suggested Penn. I said that he probobly meant Pitt, but they aren't really a rival anymore since we don't play every year. I said that we may consider tOSU a rival, but compared to Michigan, tOSU doesn't feel the same way. We talked about the big ten trying to fabricate rivalries with MSU, Nebraska (weren't they a guaranteed cross over game for a year or two?), and now MD and Rutgers.

Does Penn State need a true rival to succeed? when we won our MNC, we had Pitt as a clear rival. When we have had great teams since then (94, 99, 05, 08, 16), either we lacked something that allowed us to close out against inferior teams or the perception of our team was lacking.

Are there any top CFB teams out there that compete for national championships that don't have a real rival? Alabama has Auburn, tOSU has Michigan, etc.

Is playing a team every year a requirement for a rivalry? For example: arr Texas and Texas A&M still rivals?
Click to expand...

I agree that we don't have a rival. Rivalries are mutual and there is no case where both teams look at the schedule and circle the date. In the 80s, when PSU was an independent, I was brought up hating ND and Miami. Neither of their fan bases had the same interest. Second tier was Pitt, Syracuse, BC.

We circle tOSU, but they circle Mich and Mich circles tOSU
Pitt circles PSU, but we yawn

The MSU/PSU game maybe could have developed, but 20 years isn't enough to solidify it, geography was a problem, and frankly, for much of the time, MSU just wasn't a very good program so it wasn't game PSU REALLY cared about.

It's tough to overcome to overcome 100 years of games, competitive respect, and Woody Hayes, but the only way tOSU becomes THE game is to start beating them 50%+ of the time and Mich to go through a long period of futility.
 
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bjf1991 said:
If you don't know the answer to that one - you've never spent much time in SCar

Clemson-SCar is as bitter a rivalry as Bama-Auburn

Just doesn't get they attention nationwide because they have rarely both been good at the same time.
Click to expand...

I really wasn't sure. They don't play in the same conference (anymore), and I thought that maybe their rivalry had faded.
 
FSU-Miami-UF have a triangular rivalry. That's what PSU/OSU/scUM will become - despite wails from the b1g and the media.
 
I think we want to supplant tOSU at the top of the B1G, but we have no rival- that has to be a two way street.
 
I was torn between OSU and No Rivals. In my own head I changed it to No "true" Rivals and voted for that.

OSU has most elements of a good rivalry - mutual respect, a healthy dislike, in neighboring states, battling for conference supremacy, playing every year, fighting for recruits. But Michy will always be OSUs main rival, and it's been too one-sided with OSU being a cut above PSU for awhile now. IF, big if, we can beat them 2 of the next 3, it'll be a whole lot closer. I fcould live with PSU having no true rival but having this game circled each and every year, with the outcome unknown until the end of the 4th quarter.

Michigan has the component of dislike, but less respect on both sides. They're more arrogant than OSU for whatever reason, and despite a good record against PSU we respect them less because they have not produced to the level of their arrogance. Besides, OSU is the real big dog, so many of us want a rivalry there over one with Michigan.

MSU has not been that good consistently, there's no geographic rivalry, and they're likely to be on a downward trend after surging for awhile during Michigan's struggles. Just not enough there for a rivalry with MSU.

MD and Rutgers are just not good enough or prominent enough for it to go both ways. You need look no further than all time W-L records with those teams.

Pitt...there's mutual dislike, but it's nasty and I want no part of it. There's no mutual respect, we're in different conferences, we recruit at different levels, and it's been decades since the games decided anything. I know they've won the last 2, but Pitt is a mid major and we are trying to reestablish annual national relevance. I'd like to see PSU win these next three games convincingly to restore order to the universe, and then part ways. It's like when you grow up and realize that you just don't want certain types of people in your life anymore.
 
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Ranger, interesting poll. The fact that you have to use the term "current" as a modifier says a lot. Also "rival" to my way of thinking is a two way street. This points to Penn State having no true rival.
 
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heckmans said:
It's tough to overcome to overcome 100 years of games, competitive respect, and Woody Hayes, but the only way tOSU becomes THE game is to start beating them 50%+ of the time and Mich to go through a long period of futility.
Click to expand...

Growing up in Michigan, there was U-M/MSU. MSU would win every once in awhile, but U-M fans would always write it off as a "one-off." U-M fans were not wrong there. For 38 years, from 1970 to 2007 --- MSU never won twice in a row against U-M.

That changed in 2008 and 2009. MSU won back-to-back, the start of them winning 7 out of 8. A second win in a row tends to "validate things." It has the hints of a trend, as opposed to a one-off.

I mention that because we've never beaten Ohio State twice in a row during our B1G years. From that POV, why should Buckeye fans take PSU overly seriously? Our wins are "one-offs" to them.

We can change that, of course, this October. It would be an enormous win for our longer-term future.
 
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OSU is now the closest thing we have to a rival, but it isn't. Maybe you could call it a secondary rival?
 
This cannot be a serious question. Rutgers was, is, and always will be, our only rival. Anyone who says otherwise does not know the history of Penn State football or is trolling.:)
 
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Obliviax said:
one of the great disappointments with the B1G is their insistence on maintaining the "Big 2" of tOSU and UM. While we have a better record against tOSU than UM in the last ten years, we are still relegated to being a second tier B1G team. That has caused us to not develop a rivalry. So I don't think we have one.

tOSU would say UM, Um will say tOSU. To be a true rivalry, both teams have to recognize the other as their rival, IMHO. The B1G tried to make it Sparty. Then, they are trying to make it Rutgers or Maryland. So far, non-starters unless UM make great headway under their new HC.
Click to expand...
I'll note that lots of UM folks would say MSU. The rivalry is a little more intense on the tOSU side of things.
 
If you don't mind a Lone Star POV, I 'd like to suggest that the Penn State-Pitt rivalry was/is very similar to the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry in that (1) PSU and UT have a lopsided advantage in wins -- in PSU's case, more so in the modern era (2) the hatred is very much dominated by the Pitt/TAMU side (3) PSU and UT have had more annual "big games" (i.e. intense rivalry type games) with OSU and OU respectively, thereby lessening the intensity of games versus Pitt/TAMU.

I have many friends on both sides of the UT-TAMU issue, and the similarities above are valid. Aggies still fiercely despise all things Longhorn. For example, a clock on the A&M campus had its Roman Numeral IV changed to the Arabic "4" -- keeping I, II, III, V, etc. -- because the "IV" looked too much like a "TU." Aggies never refer to Texas as "UT" because it says THE University of Texas ... TAMU disagrees with that initial article.

Texas fans feel more emotional about the RRS vs Oklahoma than they do/did about the A&M game. I think Penn State fans feel the same way towards OSU and Pitt. If Penn State has a rival -- and I lean toward the "unrivaled" idea -- then I would say that OSU is more a rivalry than Pitt.
 
You really haven't been paying attention over the past 6 years, have you? PSU's biggest rival is the PA Govt and the miscreants the PA-Govt has installed onto the PSU BOT for the purpose of destroying PSU, attempting to destroy PSU Football as we know it, illegally Defrauding PSU of hundreds of millions of dollars to line the pockets of corrupt lawyers who are friends of the lawyer's-turned-politicians controlling the State, and PSU Board, etc... IOW, PSU's own corrupt all-powerful "Executive Committe of the BOT" is PSU's biggest rival and what they did in Nov 2011 and over the ensuing years, including signing an ILLEGAL CONTRACT, "Consent Decree" with the NCAA, to the tune of $60 million and untold hundreds of millions, if not into the billions, in terms of damages to PSU, PSU Football, PSU Athletics and the entire PSU Community is quite good evidence of it.
 
Osu. This staff does everything to beat osu. Beat osu and you can beat the everyone
 
rutgersal said:
I voted for Rutgers in anticipation of what will be.
Click to expand...

Bad rutgersal. Very bad. I can only do so much. It's not what will be. It's
what is. Rutgers is our BIGGEST RIVAL. No one else is close. Well, OK, maybe Akron, but no one else. Please do not diminish that fact by this "anticipation" BS.
 
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