The Nittany Lions finished the 1994 season unbeaten, mostly trouncing its new conference foes (average score: PSU 48, Opp 21). Penn State's membership wasn't formally approved for another half a year (until July 1990), and they didn't begin competing in the conference until 1993. (You're welcome, Nebraska, Maryland, and Rutgers).
The university presidents hold the vote (which Delany had secured prior to that Dec 89 phone call), but you better involve the athletic directors in the process or there'll be hell to pay. Young Jim Delany had worked only the university presidents in his first foray into conference expansion, and learned a valuable lesson as he watched the Big Ten's athletic power brokers fight Penn State's membership bid tooth and nail for the next six months. "Gentlemen, at 3pm we are making an announcement that Penn State is joining the Big Ten." The stunned ADs sat slack jawed, unable to speak, until Michigan's Bo Schembechler broke the silence: " you gotta be shitting me." So in mid-December 1989, then relatively new Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany gathered his 10 athletic directors onto a conference call for a big announcement.
Oklahoma Board of Supreme Court decision, independents like Penn State needed to find a conference home in order to negotiate TV-money deals that would keep them among the "haves". These were good times, and the size of Beaver Stadium grew from 46,000 seats to 91,000 seats.īut with college football's break from the NCAA in the 1984 NCAA v. It paid off handsomely, as the Lions finished in the national top 10 twelve times in the 1970s - 1980s, making 12 "BCS"-level bowls, 4 national title games, winning two consensus national championships, and one Heisman trophy.
#PENNSTATE FOOTBALL STORY SERIES#
Penn State adapted by scheduling decade-long series with traditional powers Alabama and Notre Dame, shorter series with Big Ten and Pac 10 squads willing to play the Lions (Iowa, Ohio State, USC), as well as a handful of contests against Big 8 (Nebraska) and Southwestern (Texas, Houston) teams. This progress culminated with a stretch of three unbeaten seasons (68, 69, and 73) in six years, none of which resulted in AP national championships, because no one respected eastern football.
The Nittany Lions beat Bear Bryant's Alabama in the 1959 Liberty Bowl, and stomped the guts out of Woody Hayes' then-No.1 Ohio State Buckeyes in Columbus in 1964, 23 to zip. Penn State slowly (re)built its football program during the 1950s and early 60s. The school changed its name to Penn State University the Beaver Field bleachers (capacity: 23,000) were relocated to the east end of campus, expanded to a whopping 46,000, and renamed Beaver Stadium and athletic scholarships - on a modest basis - were reinstituted (they'd been suspended since the late 1920's due to the public outcry over football deaths). The national attention brought by that fabled squad encouraged the PSC Board of Trustees to make some changes in the summer of 1953. They were a tough bunch (football being far tamer than Omaha Beach, Bastogne, Saipan, etc.). The ‘47 team finished 9-0-1, ranked 4 th in the AP poll (pre-bowls), allowing an average of 4 points per game. Following World War II, with its ranks swelled by combat vets using the GI Bill, Penn State College fielded an unbeaten 1947 squad that tied Doak Walker's #1 SMU squad in the Cotton Bowl, 13-13, when PSC's kicker (who became Pitt's AD) missed an extra point.
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