Ohio State’s matchup with Penn State this Saturday carries a much different tenor than many thought it would entering the 2025 season.
Penn State
Nittany Lions
Honestly, it carries a much different tenor than it did even a month ago. A month to the day before this story is being posted, a No. 3-ranked Penn State squad with national title ambitions, a team head coach James Franklin called his best collection of personnel yet, welcomed No. 6 Oregon into Happy Valley. The two top-10 Big Ten foes battled to double-overtime, where Ducks safety Dillon Thieneman made a spectacular interception to seal a 30-24 Oregon win.
Then the wheels came off for Penn State, which hasn’t won a football game since. The Nittany Lions played at winless UCLA the following week and fell 42-37, and the butt of Big Ten jokes, Northwestern, upset Penn State at home 22-21. Starting quarterback Drew Allar sustained a season-ending injury. Franklin was fired in the aftermath.
Another loss to Iowa under interim head coach Terry Smith leaves the once-proud Penn State at 3-4 with no Power Four victories as it limps into Columbus. While the Nittany Lions might be motivated by the potential of an upset against an Ohio State team that’s haunted them for a decade, if the Buckeyes enter with the same focus they’ve entered every game with this season, another blowout could be on hand in the Horseshoe.
Franklin, Dear Franklin
Ohio State fans should mourn the firing of Franklin. As much aplomb was given to his 4-21 record against AP top 10 opponents, the real number that matters is Franklin’s 1-10 mark against the Buckeyes. He picked up a single victory over the Scarlet and Gray in 2016 and lost the final eight matchups of his tenure to the boys from the banks of the Olentangy.
Some of the Buckeyes’ most memorable regular-season wins came against Big Game James, too. J.T. Barrett completed 16 consecutive passes to take Ohio State from 18 points down to a 39-38 victory over No. 2 Penn State and a field storm by the crowd in the Shoe.
A year later, the Buckeyes overcame another two-score deficit in the fourth quarter on the road vs. Franklin’s fools, with a K.J. Hill touchdown reception and a Chase Young fourth-down tackle sealing a 27-26 win. Both those victories in 2017 and 2018 made Eleven Warriors’ list of the top 25 Ohio State games of the past quarter-century.
Defensive end JT Tuimoloau assembled perhaps the greatest individual defensive performance in Buckeye history at Penn State in 2022, recording six tackles, three tackles for loss, two sacks, two interceptions, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery and a batted pass that led to a third interception. Ohio State won that day 44-31.
Lastly, the Buckeyes never make the College Football Playoff – let alone win their national championship – without beating then-No. 3 Penn State 20-13 on the road in 2024. One of the signature performances for both Ohio State’s adversity-overcoming offensive line and its dominant defense.
Thanks for the memories, James.
You Know Nothing, Jim Knowles
Penn State’s defensive coordinator went from the hottest name in the DC world when under Ohio State’s employ in 2024 to looking like, a la Jon Snow, he knows nothing.
Before UCLA amassed 42 points against Knowles’ defense, the Bruins’ highest point total of the season came in a 30-23 loss to UNLV. Penn State possesses the No. 29 scoring defense in the country through seven games after being hyped as one of the nation’s best ball-stopping units entering 2025. The Nittany Lions’ run defense has been especially bad, though losing star linebacker Tony Rojas didn’t help. They are 91st nationally, allowing 158.7 rushing yards per game at a clip of 4.1 yards per carry, which is 71st.
The fallout between Ohio State and Knowles immediately after (and part of it played out during) the Buckeyes’ national championship run has been catalogued elsewhere. But there’s been plenty of subtext from OSU defenders to suggest they appreciate defensive coordinator Matt Patricia’s interactive nature with them – contrary to Knowles.
“I got to know him pretty well (in the offseason),” linebacker Payton Pierce said of Patricia on Oct. 8. “It was a lot different than the previous defensive coordinator. I talked to Patricia more probably his first two days here than I did with our old defensive coordinator my whole time being here.
“He’s poured into all of us, and he does every single day. I mean, he's still sitting out here talking to players. Any questions we got, he's always here to help. Not just in football, but in life. He's given us different advice and stuff like that and he's been through so much, so it's great hearing from him every single day, and I appreciate him a lot.”
There will be a revenge element for the Ohio State defense, one intent on proving they’ve moved to an even better place after the despised nature of Knowles’ departure.
We Want the Grunke
Penn State’s new quarterback after Allar’s injury is another who, like Allar, hails from Ohio. From Ohio State’s backyard, in fact.
Produced by Olentangy High School in Lewis Center, Ohio, 20 minutes from Ohio State campus, redshirt freshman Ethan Grunkemeyer was the No. 105 overall prospect and No. 7 quarterback in the 247Sports composite for the recruiting class of 2024. Ohio State opted to take Air Noland – then an Alabama transfer by the name of Julian Sayin – in the class over Grunkemeyer. Penn State was Grunkmeyer’s most high-profile offer at the time of his commitment in May 2023.
Grunkemeyer’s first start in relief of Allar showed that there’s still much room for development in his young career. He went 15-of-28 (53.6%) for 93 yards and two interceptions with no touchdowns against Iowa on Saturday. The Hawkeyes have a great defense as always, but it still doesn’t measure up to what he’ll see from Ohio State’s No. 1 scoring and total defense this upcoming weekend.
Watch Out for Kaytron
One of the consistent weapons for the Penn State offense each of the past four seasons has been running back Kaytron Allen. In four years as a featured back, he’s never averaged less than 5 yards per carry. He’s up to 3,489 career rushing yards and 33 career rushing touchdowns, placing him No. 3 and No. 6 in school history for those categories. If he picks up another 544 rushing yards this campaign, he’ll become the Nittany Lions’ career rushing leader.
It’s been Allen’s best season yet. On 98 carries, he’s racked up 612 yards (6.2 per carry) and nine touchdowns. Even as the offense around him struggled at Iowa, he tried to will the team to victory, picking up 145 rushing yards on a workhorse load of 28 carries, with two touchdowns.
Allen had a good performance in his freshman year against Ohio State, with 12 carries for 76 yards (6.3 per carry) and a touchdown, but has been smothered by the Silver Bullets each of the last two years. In 2023 and 2024, he posted a combined 21 carries for 53 yards (2.5 per carry) and no scores vs. the Buckeyes.
The clear plan for Ohio State’s defense will be to focus on quelling Allen and the Penn State rushing attack, forcing the offense onto Grunkemeyer’s inexperienced shoulders.
Why the “Nittany” Lions?
In this writer’s purely anecdotal opinion, “Lions” is the third most common, and therefore basic, nickname for an athletics team after Tigers and Warriors. Tigers aren’t even native to the United States. Why can’t you swing a dead cat (if you catch my drift, hehe) in America without hitting a high school, college or professional athletic team named after them? I digress.
Throwing the word “Nittany” in front of “Lions” makes the nickname unique and, honestly, a cool twist. But where does it come from? The answer is simple: Mount Nittany, which rises into the sky within the same county as Penn State University. The story behind it adds even more aura to the nomenclature.
Matthew O'Haren-Imagn Images
Princeton, a football powerhouse in the 19th and very early 20th century, is among the multitude of schools with that lazy Tiger nickname. On April 20, 1904, Penn State’s basketball team played at Princeton in the toughest game of that year’s schedule. As Penn State’s players were escorted into Princeton’s gym before the game, a Tiger player proclaimed, “See our emblem, the Princeton Tiger, the fiercest beast of them all.”
At that time, PSU did not have an official mascot. But it was born when Penn State player Harrison “Joe” Mason retorted with the following:
“Well, up at Penn State, we have Mount Nittany right on our campus, where rules the Nittany Mountain Lion, who has never been beaten in a fair fight. So, Princeton Tiger, look out!”
Though the mountain lions of Mount Nittany were eradicated by the year 1900, a stuffed one killed by a man named Samuel Brush was on display on Penn State’s campus during that time. The taxidermied animal called to Mason to push for the Nittany Lion moniker as the official school mascot. In 1907, his senior year, he penned a poem in The Lemon, the school’s magazine, calling for the “Old Nittany Mountain Lion” to become the school’s symbol. He wrote:
Yale she loves her ancient Bulldog,
Princeton has her Tiger cruel,
Dickinson her brawny Mastiff
West Point claims the Army Mule.
Pennsylvania is the Quaker,
Michigan the Wolverine,
But where is Old Penn State?
Oh! We’re sorry to relate
She still sleeps ‘neath the shade of Nittany.
The moniker took off from there, appearing in school yearbooks, getting a fight song themed around it from the school’s glee club and seeing various mascot iterations at football games. Calls for it would lie dormant for periods of time, but finally, in 1939, the mascot reemerged on the sidelines. That year, it became a permanent fixture, and it was soon adopted as the official Penn State nickname and mascot.
