Ohio will take on Penn State for the seventh time in program history Saturday, and for the seventh time in State College.
The first five games all took place between 1967 and 1974 and were won by Penn State. Those games were between a pair of long-tenured coaches, Bill Hess at Ohio and Joe Paterno at Penn State.
Hess was long gone by the time the two schools matched up for the sixth time, but Paterno played a major role in the 2012 matchup.
In the year or so prior to the two squaring off to open the 2012 season, Penn State had been rocked by two extremely important events. First, the revelation of the Jerry Sandusky scandal and subsequent NCAA investigation and punishment, which led to Paterno’s firing in the midst of his 46th year in charge. The second was his death, which came just a few months later.
Penn State saw more than a decade of wins vacated and many players leave the program. The squad that took on Ohio in Penn State head coach Bill O’Brien’s first game was a far cry from the dominant program Paterno had built, and it certainly showed on the field that day in Ohio’s shocking 24-14 win.
For Ohio, on the other hand, that 2012 game was possibly the highest point in the best two year stretch it had under another legendary head coach, Frank Solich.
Ohio won 10 games in 2011, and got its season off to a strong start in 2012 with the win over Penn State. After that game, Ohio went on to its next six games, finish with a 9-4 record and win a bowl game for the second year in a row.
In the game itself, Ohio was led by quarterback Tyler Tettleton and running back Beau Blankenship, whose names are now plastered all over the Ohio record books.
Tettleton completed 31 of 41 pass attempts for 324 yards and two touchdowns, while adding another on the ground. He is still Ohio’s career leader in passing yards, attempts, completions and touchdowns. His 2011 and 2013 seasons are undoubtedly the two best in school history.
Blankenship rushed for 109 yards on a whopping 31 carries. He was a huge reason why Ohio was able to keep the ball for almost 33 minutes and control the pace of the game. This game was only the beginning for Blankenship, who would go on to put up one of the best rushing seasons in Ohio history in 2012. That year, he finished with 1,604 yards on 312 carries, both the most in program history, and 15 touchdowns.
The 2012 game against Penn State may have been a sign of things to come for both coaches. Solich would remain at Ohio for another eight seasons, making six more bowl games and winning three of them. He never did capture that elusive Mid-American Conference title, but the field at Peden Stadium is now named after him. Solich is also the winningest coach in MAC history.
O’Brien won the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year award following the 2012 season, but wasn’t at Penn State for much longer. He left to become the head coach of the Houston Texans following the 2013 season.
This time around, Ohio is the program dealing with the departure of a long-time coach, and James Franklin, who took over from O’Brien in 2014, has turned Penn State back into one of the Big Ten’s premier programs.
While it’s unlikely that Ohio will pull off the same trick it did a decade ago, stranger things have happened in college football. Ohio will be brimming with confidence after a win over Florida Atlantic last weekend, and can use that to its advantage Saturday.
