Can Penn State beat both Ohio State and Michigan in 2023 — most certainly the surest path to the College Football Playoffs?
It might be the single most important question of the upcoming season, right up there with, “Can Drew Allar be great?”
Beating the Buckeyes and the Wolverines in the span of four games and 22 days in 2023 — Oct. 21 at The Shoe and Nov. 11 at high Big Noon in The Beav, with Indiana and Maryland in-between — is possible. The Penn State Hype Train is fully loaded, for several good reasons
But, it is a Herculean task, to be sure.
Penn State, historically, has had about an 8% success rate (2 of 26, 7.69%, to be exact) in pulling off the double win in the same season.
Since joining the Big Ten Conference in 1993, Penn State has played both Ohio State and Michigan in the same season a total of 26 times. The Nittany Lions beat both teams in the same season only twice in those years. Overall, when PSU plays Ohio State and Michigan in the same year, these have been the results:
PSU won both (2) — 1994, 2008
PSU lost both (11) — 1993, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2021, 2022
PSU beat Ohio State, lost to Michigan (5) — 1997, 1999, 2001, 2005, 2016
PSU beat Michigan, lost Ohio State (8) — 1995, 1996, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2017, 2019, 2020
As a member of the Big Ten, Penn State has played Ohio State every season since joining the league. However, since 1993, the Nittany Lions have not played Michigan in four seasons — 2003, 2004, 2011 and 2012. Prior to the Big Ten, Penn State had never faced Michigan — a shame, since a “Joe vs. Bo” face-off would have been special, in part because it was Paterno who recommended Schembechler when Michigan athletic director Don Canham originally offered the position to Paterno.
The PSU over OSU/U-M single-season combo wins:
The first came in 1994, just Penn State’s second season in the Big Ten Conference. Third-ranked Penn State edged No. 5 Michigan, 31-27, in The Big House on Oct. 15. Then, after a bye week, the Nittany Lions demolished Ohio State, 63-14, in Beaver Stadium on Oct. 29. Penn State entered that game ranked No. 1, while the Buckeyes were No. 21.
And, in 2008, the Nittany Lions pulled off the feat in especially impressive fashion. Undefeated and ranked third in the nation, Penn State did the double deed in back-to-back weeks (home, 46-17, vs. Michigan, Oct. 18 and at Ohio State, 13-9, on Oct. 25). It was the first time any team achieved that double-killing in over 50 years.
Since the 2009 season, Ohio State and Michigan have had 80 common opponents in the same season — i.e., opponents that have played both the Buckeyes and the Wolverines the same year. Penn State is responsible for 12 of those games.
Of the dozen seasons from 2009 to 2022, five of those 80 teams have pulled off the Single Season Combo. They are: Purdue (2009), Wisconsin (2010) and Michigan State (2011, 2013 and 2015).
That’s a success rate of 6.25%. So, Penn State’s 8% rate is basically par for the Ohio State/Michigan course.
CHARTING THE PENN STATE HEAD COACHES
Many of Penn State’s head coaches had big success against Ohio State, but until PSU joined the Big Ten the Nittany Lions never faced Michigan. Bill Hollenback’s 1912 Penn State squad, led by Pete Mauthe, went 8-0 and beat Ohio State, 37-0, in Columbus. Rip Engle was 3-0 vs. the Buckeyes, with a pair of legendary wins — 10-7 at No. 10 Ohio State in 1963, then a rousing 27-0 shutout of the No. 2 Buckeyes in Columbus in 1964.
Bill O’Brien’s 2013 squad beat No. 18 Michigan in four overtimes at Beaver Stadium, a win of epic proportions for myriad reasons. But, his teams fell twice to Ohio State, including a 63-14 thrashing at the hands of Urban Meyer in 2013. (OB is still fuming, I think.) Tom Bradley, as the interim head coach, took his team into Columbus in a maelstrom of a 2011 season, and Wildcatted their way to a 20-14 victory. Bradley also ran the show on the sidelines for Penn State in its 2008 win in Columbus, as Paterno was relegated to the press box with an injury.
Here’s an interesting comparison:
Paterno was a combined 4-2 in his last six games against Ohio State (1-2) and Michigan (3-0) from 2008-2010. Franklin is 4-14 vs. Ohio State/Michigan overall, from 2014-2022; 4-10 since 2016; and 2-8 since 2018.
| PSU Head Coach | vs. Ohio State | vs. Michigan | Combined |
| Bill Hollenback | 1-0 (1.000) | — | 1-0 (1.000) |
| Rip Engle | 3-0 (1.000) | — | 3-0 (1.000) |
| Joe Paterno | 8-14 (.364) | 6-10 (.375) | 14-24 (.368) |
| Tom Bradley | 1-0 (1.000) | — | 1-0 (1.000) |
| Bill O’Brien | 0-2 (.000) | 1-0 (1.000) | 1-2 (.333) |
| James Franklin | 1-8 (.111) | 3-6 (.333) | 4-14 (.222) |
| Total | 14-24 (.368) | 10-16 (.384) | 24-40 (.375) |
WHAT THE 2023 COORDINATORS SAY
How close is Penn State in 2023?
In December, before the Rose Bowl, I asked Penn State coordinators Mike Yurcich (offense), who coached at Ohio State in 2019, and former Miami (Fla.) head coach Manny Diaz (defense) what it would take for Penn State to close the gap with Ohio State and Michigan. Both are big-time veterans of major college football, and quite good with the media. I appreciated that neither deflected the question.
Here is what they had to say:
MANNY DIAZ: “It’s a great question. It feels like a broad question, like there’s these grandiose things that we have to do. And I don’t think the players from the locker room see it that way…I don’t think they feel the proverbial gap is quite as big.
“Now, as a bit of time has gone through those games, I think we were learning. I think that’s what teams are allowed to do. You hear coach (Franklin) say it all the time — it doesn’t mean it’s not true — that losses can become lessons. I think we learned a lot from both of those games.
“Just talking to the players here — you know, obviously, I was not here last fall (2021) — but if you look at where Michigan was when they walked out of State College in 2021, they were two teams that were probably mirror images of each other. Michigan’s belief in what happened here, then beating Ohio State (42-27) in Ann Arbor over a year ago and then how they’ve kicked on from that.”
MIKE YURCICH: “Yeah, that’s a great question. I think what we need to do is make sure that we’re executing better and that we’re coaching better. I think all those things add up. I don’t think it’s one thing necessarily. That’s a very complex question that a lot of things factor into it. I think we need to continue to recruit at a championship level. It starts with that. But at the end of the day, we have to continue to take care of the ball and finish — and control what we can control.
“I think our guys are hungry. I don’t want to really look past this Rose Bowl and that sort of thing with this question. It’s difficult for me to answer at this time. But, you know, I think those things all add up. I don’t think it’s one thing and we’re going to continue to press on and drive that home.”
WHAT FRANKLIN SAID IN 2018
On Sept. 29, 2018, Penn State lost by a sole point, 27-26, to Ohio State in Beaver Stadium, when the PSU offense failed to convert on a fourth-and-5 in the final minutes. It was Penn State’s second consecutive one-point loss to the Buckeyes, after upsetting the second-ranked Buckeyes, 24-21, thanks to Grant Haley’s scoop-and-score in Beaver Stadium in 2016 — no doubt the biggest win of the 101 games of the Franklin Era at Penn State.
Franklin, infamously, said that evening after the game (I was there): “The reality is, we’ve gone from an average football team, to a good football team, to a great football team.
“But,” Franklin added, “we’re not an elite team yet. The work that it’s going to take to get to an elite program is going to be just as hard as the ground and the distance that we’ve already traveled to get there. We’re going to break through, and be an elite program, by doing all the little things. We’re a great program. We lost to an elite program. And we’re that close.”
“It’s all the details; it’s all the little things,” the Penn State head coach said. “It’s finding a way to overcome adversity consistently. It’s going to class consistently. It’s getting to meetings on time. It’s having your phone turned off in the meetings. It’s not settling for a B in a class when you could have gotten an A. It’s taking notes in every single meeting… Those little things have slipped by? It’s one point last year, it’s one point this year. It’s not happening anymore.”
Since 2018 — and counting that game — Penn State is 0-5 vs. Ohio State and 2-3 against Michigan. In that time, Ohio State is 2-2 vs. That Team Up North, with Michigan beating the Buckeyes in both 2021 and ’22 (the two didn’t meet in 2020, due to COVID).
Since The GGE Game, here is how the three teams have fared:
Ohio State — 51-7 (.879), 3 Big Ten titles, 3 College Football Playoff appearances
Michigan — 43-13 (.768), 2 Big Ten titles, 2 College Football Playoff appearances
Penn State — 38-19 (.667), 2 new contracts for Franklin
