If you want to stir up folks on either side of the Ohio State vs. Penn State series, just raise the question of whether Buckeyes-Nitttany Lions counts as a rivalry. Over more than a century of football meetings, that’s been the rub for many fans.

Any true followers of the Scarlet and Gray know there’s only 1 rival: TTUN. The Team Up North. Michigan.

For lovers of the Blue and White, there hasn’t been a rival since the Nittany Lions stopped playing Pitt on a regular basis. The program even throws around “Unrivaled” as a slogan/buzzword.

All that said, the neighboring state schools have been division mates in the Big Ten for 12 years ahead of their late October meeting in 2022. Some recent close games have stirred some hard feelings, if not true rival-level hatred.

Let’s take a look at how Ohio State vs. Penn State got to this point:

The ‘rough’ start in 1912

The first dispute. Penn State claims a 37-0 victory during its 8-0 season. Ohio State says it forfeited and therefore lists a 1-0 loss.

Accounts suggest coach Bill Hollenback, team captain Pete Mauthe, star player Eugene “Shorty” Miller and about 12-15 other hardnosed Penn State students did indeed hop a train to Columbus and put 37 points up before Ohio State coach John Richards pulled his team off the field citing excessively rough play by the visitors. Some accounts suggest there was an on-field fight.

The Columbus Citizen opined: “It goes without saying that no future games will be scheduled between Penn State and Ohio State.”

The schools didn’t meet again on the gridiron until 44 years had gone by.

Woody vs. JoePa: Icons collide

Coaching legends Woody Hayes and Joe Paterno were on opposing sidelines 6 times, the final 3 for top 10 showdowns in the 1970s.

Unranked Penn State teams knocked off top 10 Ohio State squads in Columbus in 1956, 1963 and 1964 while Paterno was an assistant to Rip Engle. Hayes was already into his dominant run leading the Buckeyes, which started in 1951 and ended abruptly in 1978.

Hayes won the first 2 meetings in the 1970s, including a 12-7 slobber-knocker in ’76, the Buckeyes first visit to State College.

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Paterno got his lone victory over Hayes as a head coach in ’78, his No. 5 Lions beating the No. 6 Buckeyes 19-0 in a season that ended 1 game short of perfection — a 14-7 Sugar Bowl loss to Alabama and yet another coaching legend, Bear Bryant.

Hayes and Paterno, both College Football Hall of Fame inductees, left behind legacies and controversies. Neither program, nor college football, would be what it has become without them.

The 1980 Fiesta Bowl

In Penn State’s only bowl against a Big Ten opponent, the No. 10 Lions scored the game’s final 24 points and shut out Art Schlichter and the No. 11 Buckeyes in the second half for a 31-19 victory.

Todd Blackledge and game MVP Curt Warner, who would go on to lead PSU to its first national championship 2 years later, each scored touchdowns.

At that point, Penn State led the all-time series 6-2.

Rivalry affirmed, 1990s

The teams met 7 times in the 1990s after Penn State joined the Big Ten in ’93. In each game, both teams were ranked and at least one was in the top 5. The Buckeyes won 4 of them, including the first matchup as league rivals and a 38-7 domination of a top-5 showdown in ’96. Penn State romped to a 63-14 victory during its undefeated 1994 season.

In a preview of the 1998 matchup, the AP suggested the matchup had quickly become “one of the country’s biggest rivalries.”

Rivalry denied, soon after

Since 2002, Ohio State has gone 16-4 in the series through 2021, winning 10 of those by double digits. In the waning years of his 46-year head coaching career, Paterno went 3-7 against counterparts Jim Tressel and Luke Fickell. Bill O’Brien went 0-2 vs. Urban Meyer. And James Franklin entered 2022 1-7 against Meyer and Ryan Day.

Not much of a rivalry. After Ohio State’s 33-24 win in 2021, the Buckeyes led the series 23-14.

Former Penn State player Antonio Shelton, a native of Columbus, put it this way a couple years ago:

“First of all, it’s not a rivalry. … This is two good football teams who are playing each other. That’s it.”

Rivalry flare-up, 2016-18

Charismatic Penn State quarterback Trace McSorley found a way to get under the skin of Buckeyes fans with his touchdown celebrations. He made his team Ohio State’s top challenger if not top rival during his 31-win starting career.

But after a blocked kick turned into a touchdown to lift Penn State to a 24-21 win in 2016, OSU quarterbacks JT Barrett and Dwayne Haskins led 4th-quarter rallies to give the Bucks 1-point wins in 2017 and 2018. James Franklin’s program is still trying to catch its breath after those gut punches.

*The* pretentious *The*

Ohio State persons, for whatever reason, like to refer to their school in a formal manner. Former Buckeyes in the NFL will often say “The Ohio State University” after their name on recorded introductions for primetime TV broadcasts. Over to the east, roughly 320 miles from Columbus in State College, folks are, well, more folksy. But if one should ask, they’ll inform that the actual name of the institution is The Pennsylvania State University. But that doesn’t really roll off the tongue after “We are … ”

Long histories, many wins

Entering 2022, Ohio State stood 3rd on college football’s all-time wins list behind TTUN and Alabama. Penn State was 8th at 909.

At one time, Penn State was above OSU on the list, but the Buckeyes have won 46 more games than the Lions since the year 2000 (through 2021). If our math is correct, Ohio State passed the Lions on Sept. 14, 2013. The Buckeyes started playing football in 1890, 3 years after Penn State. As of the start of the 2022 season, they had 31 more wins in 32 fewer games than PSU.

Iconic stadiums

Penn State’s Beaver Stadium, opened in 1960, has an odd charm, looking like a giant gray battleship in the middle of an open field. And it holds a few more people than Ohio Stadium does. The atmosphere is electric for White Outs at night, which PSU fans would have for every OSU visit if it were up to them.

But The Horseshoe, which debuted in 1922 along the banks of the Olentangy River, carries a classic, historical ambiance that probably is the envy of the rest of college football. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The airhorns incident

Apparently, some Penn State fans weren’t the most gracious of hosts in 2014.

The Buckeyes managed to get some rest anyway, because the game didn’t kick till 8 p.m., and No. 13 Ohio State escaped 31-24 in double overtime against James Franklin’s first Penn State team.

“I hate this place so much,” Bucks linebacker Darron Lee said. “They disturbed my slumber last night.”

The perpetrators might have been delivering payback for Ohio State’s no-mercy 63-14 pasting of the sanctions-addled Lions the year before in Columbus, PSU’s worst loss since 1899.

Perhaps the, uh, “wake-up call” helped the Buckeyes, who went on to win the national championship.

Maybe we can term this a “sleepy rivalry”?