Sports
Rutgers hosts Penn State in third installment of regional rivalry
Entering this season, the situation surrounding the Big Ten East was as clear cut as it could possibly be — Michigan, Ohio State vying for the top spot and every other team picking up the crumbs far below them.
But in a sport as unpredictable and chaotic as college football, it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the team’s projected to be at the mid-tier of the division emerged as a contender for the title and a spot in the Big Ten Championship game.
The shock comes in that team not being Michigan State, a team a year removed from a Big Ten conference title and a spot in the four-team College Football Playoff, but Penn State, a program seemingly at a standstill in the third year of head coach James Franklin’s tenure.
The Nittany Lions started the same way the Rutgers football team, their next opponent did, splitting the first four games of the season, including their first Big Ten games of the year.
The results of those first conference games were promising for the Scarlet Knights and worrying for Penn State, with Rutgers nearly upsetting defending Big Ten West division champions Iowa at home and the Nittany Lions getting blown out at the Big House by the Wolverines, but the roles reversed as the conference schedule played out.
As the Knights went on to lose every other Big Ten game it played, falling to the Spartans, the Buckeyes and the Wolverines by a combined score of 185-0, Penn State has run the table in its last seven conference games, shooting itself up the playoff committee’s rankings to No. 8.
With two weeks remaining in the season, the Nittany Lion’s path to improbably winning the East is simple — win their final two games and hope Michigan loses one of its last two contests.
That’s where the Knights come in.
Hosting a program that’s rapidly become the most bitter Big Ten rival among its fanbase, Rutgers has little more than pride to play for.Nov 18 2016
