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With Penn State’s football season now officially in the books, now is a good time to start putting the whole season into perspective. Although the season ended with the Nittany Lions coming up just short of playing for a national championship, there were a lot of good moments to reflect on positively from the 2024 season that ended with a final record of 13-3. The shortcomings are well documented, but the highlights of the year should not be forgotten.
Going into the 2024 season opened the door to a brand new Big Ten and a new approach to how the championship game matchup would be determined. With the addition of four new schools with Oregon, UCLA, SUC, and Washington all coming over from the crumbling Pac-12, the Big Ten had a football membership of 18 members. That led to a removal of a divisional format and meant the top two teams in the final Big Ten standings would be given a spot in the Big Ten championship game. As far as Penn State was concerned, that removed the typical roadblocks of finishing in a divisional tie with Ohio State or Michigan to compete for a Big Ten title.
As long as Penn State could avoid slipping up in some of the potentially tricky road trips against USC, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, then Penn State would be a strong Big Ten title contender as the season came to a close. The schedule did not include a game against defending national champion Michigan and managed to skip one of the preseason favorites, Oregon, in the regular season schedule that did include three games against new conference members. Of course, there was still the regular matchup with Ohio State, which did not go Penn State’s way yet again.
But Penn State won every other Big Ten game on its schedule, including those road games at USC, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, while Ohio State lost a head-to-head matchup against Oregon and…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/top-10-moments-penn-state-191937690.html
Author : Nittany Lions Wire
Publish date : 2025-01-19 19:19:00
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