As a sports fan, you carry the pride of victory and the burden of defeat. And there are some games that just sting a little bit more.
It’s a hypothetical question but one that I’m sure you’ve pondered over: If you could change the outcome of one Penn State game, which one would it be?
There is always one game that nags at you. There’s one that will ruin a perfectly good day because you thought about it randomly. It’s the one you’d like to have back as a fan because it changes so much.
Here are my candidates and my pick if I, like Cher, could turn back time.
The Candidates
Ohio 24, Penn State 14 – 2012
This makes the list of sentimental reasons. This was my first game as a student. In the grand scheme, not an outcome that is a day ruiner but it would have been nice to have my first Penn State game as a student be a win.
Ohio State 31, Penn State 24 (2OT) – 2014
First, there is the imprint of Akeel Lynch (my favorite Penn State football player as a student) being shellacked by Joey Bosa on the final overtime play.
Then there is the grander outcome. If Ohio State loses that game, it certainly doesn’t make the playoff. It certainly doesn’t win the first College Football Playoff if that happens. Does Ohio State become one of the three core powerhouse programs in the 2010s then? Does Urban Meyer stay for that much longer at Ohio State? Does Penn State get ahead of schedule in terms of repairing after the sanctions?
It’s not a day ruiner but this one crosses my mind.
Iowa 23, Penn State 20 – 2021
To be truthfully honest, Iowa could make this list for me several times. In fact, I changed my mind on which game I picked off that list from the 2008 game – mainly because if Penn State wins that game, I’m not sure their strength of schedule is strong enough to make the BCS Championship and I’m not sure they win it anyway – to this one.
While I am an ardent Sean Clifford defender, I’m fascinated by what happens if he doesn’t get hurt in this game. Penn State probably wins this game handedly, doesn’t suffer a collapse against Illinois the following week and maybe Clifford jets off to the NFL a year earlier. Then what? Does Drew Allar start in 2022?
This is the devil on the shoulder but the butterfly effect impacting the now of this one is just tantalizing enough to want to know what happens here.
Then again, we don’t get the moment of Clifford walking off the movie set in Pasadena a year later and I don’t plant the rose bush that’s currently blooming in my backyard.
Michigan 27, Penn State 25 – 2005
I’m not sure I’m changing the outcome of this one as much as I am stopping the one moment – or rather two seconds – that changed the outcome of this one. Of course, I’m talking about Lloyd Carr’s ask for two seconds back to allow Michigan a chance to score on the final play of the game.
I, being a moody 11 year old Penn State fan at the time, went upstairs to listen to the game on the radio because I couldn’t watch anymore. I never saw the play until nearly a decade later when they showed it on the jumbotron at the Big House for another Penn State-Michigan loss in 2014.
I also think this one is interesting on a national landscape. Does Penn State – now undefeated – make the BCS National Championship that year? And if they do, I have to live with the fact that means we never see the greatest college football game ever played between Texas and USC in that year’s national championship. There is no iconic Keith Jackson call. No recreating that play on the playground. I just don’t know if I can do that to America – or my youth.
The Pick
Michigan State 27, Penn State 24 – 2017
It’s this one.
This is the best Penn State football team I’ve ever watched. I think no team deserved to have a shot at a national title in my lifetime more than this one. (Although you could make the case the 1994 team deserved a national championship, but they won all of their games and I was an infant.)
I blame it all on the weather. There are two specific skies that I remember looking at while attending Penn State games. The first is the beautiful sunset of the 2013 double overtime Michigan win and the second one is watching the thunderclouds rolling into East Lansing that day from the second deck of Spartan Stadium.
We then retreated to a nearby classroom building where we waited out the storm by having some student log us into a computer so we could watch football, eagerly hopeful that Penn State’s offense – which had started to click right before the delay – would continue out of the break.
Then, still damp, we returned to Spartan Stadium to watch a critical roughing the passer penalty put Matt Coghlin into position for a game-winning kick.
I didn’t say anything. The second it went through, I walked out of Spartan Stadium without saying a word and have forever burned that loss into my brain. There went the best chance for Penn State to make the College Football Playoff in the four-team era. There went Saquon Barkley’s chance at a national title. Poof. Gone.
It will always be that game – until more heartbreak comes – that I’d like to have back.
You can read Steve’s picks here. Be sure to share which game you’d change the outcome of by filling out our form below.
