I have a little anxiety.
Thirty years ago today, Sept. 17, 1994 – which was a Saturday that year, not a Tuesday – the No. 8-ranked Penn State football team beat Iowa in Beaver Stadium by the score of 61-21.
It was the Nittany Lions’ second year of playing football in the Big Ten, having finished in third place in the conference in their inaugural 1993 season with a 10-2 overall record, and a 6-2 record in-conference. The 1993 losses came at the hands of Michigan by a 21-13 score, and Ohio State 24-6. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
In 1994, though, things got much better. After that beating of Iowa, over the course of the next three games – victories over Rutgers, Temple and a No. 5-ranked Michigan – Penn State gradually moved up the AP rankings into the No. 1 spot in the country. Just in time for a home game against the 21st-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes. (Yes, as a welcome gift to the Big Ten Conference, Penn State’s football schedule included back-to-back games against Michigan and Ohio State those first two years!)
Except, as students of Penn State football history know all too well, that ascension to No. 1 in the country was not to last. And it wasn’t because of Penn State.
No, on that late October day in 1994 the Penn State football team beat Ohio State by its most lopsided winning margin in the history between the two teams: 63-14 (which was paid back in kind by Ohio State in 2013).
So, what happened to that No. 1 ranking? After spending a glorious single week as the top team in the country, Penn State… dropped back to No. 2. After its largest-ever margin-of-victory over a vaunted competitor.
What gives?
What gives is the No. 3 team in the country that week, Nebraska, defeated No. 2 Colorado by a score of 24-7.
The AP pollsters rewarded Cornhuskers by moving them ahead of Penn State, where both teams stayed unbeaten and ranked No. 1 and No. 2 through the rest of the season. That’s right, a No.1-ranked team got pushed aside after demolishing a worthy opponent. So much for the, “they’re No. 1 until someone beats them” mantra.
To make matters worse, as Penn State football buffs know, there would be no No. 1 vs No. 2 bowl game – a la the 1986 Penn State vs. Miami Fiesta Bowl — even though the “Bowl Coalition” had been in place for a few years with the purpose of matching up the top two ranked teams at the end of the season. That’s because Penn State was now in the Big Ten Conference, and the Big Ten Conference champion played the Pac-10 Conference Champion in the Rose Bowl, which was not part of the “Bowl Coalition.” So there would be no 1 vs 2. That’s how it worked.
Instead, No. 2 Penn State played and beat No. 12 Oregon in the Rose Bowl, while No. 1 Nebraska played and beat the No. 3 Miami Hurricanes in the Orange Bowl. Which resulted in the final AP poll giving 51½ first-place votes to Nebraska and 10½ to Penn State.
Granted, Penn State was ranked No. 1 in the final New York Times computer rankings and the Sagarin rankings – both of which theoretically removed any human bias that would be present in the AP sportswriters poll. So, Penn State has that.
In addition, with the advent of advanced statistical models, ESPN’s Bill Connelly went back last year and used his SP+ metrics and determined the five best teams for every decade since the 1920’s. The result in 1994? Yes, Penn State was better than Nebraska.
Therein lies the reason for my anxiety.
Here in 2024, due to those human voters of yesteryear, unfortunately we’re not celebrating the 30th anniversary of the undisputed and deserved 1994 National Champion Penn State Nittany Lion football team.
However, a new day has dawned and the expanded College Football Playoff is here. If it had been in place, as many sources have been telling us for months, Penn State would have made a 12-team College Football Playoff six times over the last eight seasons. That’s a reason to be excited!
Now, for the first time in major college football history the goal line has changed. We have a playoff system where, come the end of the regular season, five conference champions are rewarded, and seven other teams will still have national title hopes alive — giving Penn State, the winningest FBS college football team to never make the BCS or the four-team playoff, a shot at a national title!
Except, human voters still have a hand in deciding who gets into the playoffs. Sure, if you win the Big Ten you are automatically in, but Penn State hasn’t done that since 2016. So, the human touch of fate might still play a part in the equation for Penn State to win another national title.
And guess what? That old 1994 nemesis is back. Nebraska is ranked in college football for the first time since 2019.
But, unlike 1994, Nebraska and Penn State are now members of the same conference – the Big Ten. Although they don’t play during the regular season (unless they both make the Big Ten Championship game) they do have some common opponents. And common opponents with other common opponents. Which are important parts of most statistical models that determine how good your team is. Which, as noted above, if we had followed computer rankings in 1994, PSU would have been national champs.
And this is where my anxiety really starts to take off.
One major metric that receives a lot of notice is “strength of schedule.” Basically, how hard is your team’s schedule compared to other teams’ schedules. Using ESPN’s College Football Power Index, a predictive rating system designed to measure team strength and project performance going forward,
Penn State’s schedule so far ranks as the 85th toughest in the country. Nebraska is ranked 114th.
Going forward, however, Penn State’s remaining strength of schedule is ranked 26th, but Nebraska’s is 15th. Meaning, Nebraska has an opportunity to close that strength of schedule gap by the end of the season. And with six common opponents on each team’s schedules – Illinois, Ohio State, Purdue, Wisconsin, UCLA and USC – games against those opponents will mean a lot in determining not only the computer rankings, but the human component in the playoff choices.
Which brings me back to 1994. A year when the computer models said Penn State was better, but the human factor said Nebraska.
A common thought about the human factor in those 1994 polls is that sympathy or empathy for Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne played a part in those AP voters ranking Nebraska ahead of Penn State. It’s human nature to root for the underdog.
And, back then, Tom Osborne was a respected head coach who had been leading a team for more than two decades, was nearing the end of his career (he would retire three seasons later), and had never won a national championship. The other choice already had two national titles. Tom Osborne was seen as the deserving underdog.
Plus, we only need to look to last year to see the Playoff Committee leaving out a 13-0 power conference champion from the playoff field – all due to the human factor (No snickering over how that team is doing so far this year).
Which is why, given the general consensus that current AP-ranked No. 3 Ohio State andNo. 9 Oregon are the anointed top teams in the Big Ten, and with No. 11 USC looking stronger, if resurgent No. 22 Nebraska has a good season and finishes with a similar record to Penn State, might there be a human factor choice in who gets into the playoff?
And if so, who gets chosen? Penn State and James Franklin? Or Nebraska and Matt Rhule, a head coach with a history of turning teams around, who graduated from State College High School, was a third-string linebacker on that 1994 Penn State team and is now coaching the team that caused him heartache 30 years ago. Who would get the sympathy and empathy human factor vote on the playoff committee?
Not to mention, Penn State didn’t play this weekend and dropped two spots in the AP poll – from No. 8 to No. 10.
Can you see why I’m anxious?
