In retrospect, the day took a turn well before the ball was ever placed on a kicking tee.
In the parking lot between Lincoln Financial Field and the then Wells Fargo Center, our group of friends had set up a modest tailgate, complete with a grill, a few tables for food, chairs and a two-and-a-half-foot tree stump recently recovered from a landscaping job the tailgate’s leader completed.
That tree stump became a source of our entertainment throughout football seasons in the form of a game where every participant takes a nail, lightly taps it into the wood before taking turns by throwing the hammer into the air and in one motion, swinging down on an opponent’s nail.
The owner of the last nail standing – or poking out of the tree stump – wins. It is one of the great tailgate games, though one that should not be played with open-toed shoes, both when and not when alcohol is involved.
Midway through a round, someone – whose name will be redacted for fear her child will one day search the internet for her mom’s name – swung the hammer into the air and, on its return down, said hammer found her forehead in a way that not even Wile E. Coyote would make solid contact directly with his forehead. It was as if the intention of the hammer was not to go into a nail but directly against the dead center part of this person’s noggin like there was a giant target painted on it. Though immediately fine, that person then had what might well have been a target on their forehead because of the red goose-egg that had formed.
I’m not sure if there is video evidence of that moment from that game – but there is video evidence of what happened after that incident.
Over the next few hours, Christian Hackenberg would be pulled down 10 times. Penn State’s offense sputtered, accumulating just 183 yards. Temple beat the Nittany Lions for the first time since 1941.
Penn State’s 2015 loss to the Owls was the lowest on-the-field moment of the sanction era. Things never got as bad as they did the day Hackenberg was sacked 10 times and our friend hit herself with a hammer.
The anatomy of a 10-sack game, something that has only been done 22 other times since 2005 in all of college football, started because Penn State was still recovering from the scholarship limit sanctions set by the NCAA in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual assault case.
Though – by the 2015 season – Penn State had various parts of those sanctions restored, including bowl eligibility, the Nittany Lions’ depth was tested at offensive line in part because Penn State coaches Bill O’Brien and then James Franklin had to pick and choose between skill or size.
And most of the time, skill won. Penn State was able to recruit players like Hackenberg under O’Brien but also players like DaeSean Hamilton, Saeed Blacknall and even Saquon Barkley under Franklin during that time.
The 2014 class contained just three offensive linemen, none of whom had more than three stars and the 2015 class, who were freshmen at the time of the Temple game, was mostly not yet ready for starting reps in college football.
Plus, Penn State had to replace Donovan Smith who was off to the NFL that season. It was a bit of a perfect storm for opposing defenses but in particular that day it was a perfect opportunity for the Temple defense.
It had free rein to do what it wanted against Penn State’s offensive line and took advantage of that. Led by Tyler Matakevich and Haason Reddick, two Owls who went on to solid NFL careers after, the Temple defense held Penn State to just 80 rushing yards on top of the 10 sacks.
Matakevich had seven tackles in the effort with three of the 10 sacks.
It was, from a statistical point of view, the low point of the sanction era – in part because of Penn State’s limited depth.
“Our best five were playing. The guys backing them up were redshirt freshmen,” Franklin said at the time.
To make matters worse, Penn State’s linebacking core also had its depth tested when Nyeem Wartman-White tore his ACL in the first half. A Hackenberg turnover early in the third quarter primed the Owls to take a 17-10 lead, and then PJ Walker was able to slice the defense apart to seal the victory while guys like Manny Bowen and Jake Cooper, both freshmen at the time, were thrust into key spots.
Everything that could go wrong for Penn State went wrong for Penn State – even off the field and away from the tailgates.
During the game, former defensive back Stephon Morris tweeted “Can’t just dominate the state in recruiting..How about dominating the state on the field as well??” Smith posted “This exact reason” was why he left Penn State early while older alumni like Daryll Clark posted their frustrations as well.
For as much as Penn State was able to build magic behind O’Brien during 2012 and 2013, and Penn State was able to cobble together moments that led them to play in a bowl in 2014, there was something particularly awful about that Temple loss. On the field, Penn State was not Penn State and the Owls took advantage of that.
That Temple team went on to win 10 games that year, and it helped launch former Penn Stater Matt Rhule into a prolonged coaching career that included stops at Baylor, the Carolina Panthers and now Nebraska. Rhule was then linked to the open Penn State position this offseason because of the fact that current Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft was the Temple AD at the time. However, Rhule signed an extension in Lincoln last year, and Penn State found Matt Campbell.
Eventually Penn State in the immediate aftermath of that loss found winning ways a year later under Franklin, winning the Big Ten the next season and restoring the balance in the Keystone State for football superiority that extended until 2024.
But part of the reason why that game still lingers is the fact that Temple was able to overpower Penn State in a modern football world. That was not supposed to happen – even with those sanctions. Yet it did. Those games are memorable – even when your team is on the losing end of those – because they’re just that hard to forget, even if you clobber yourself with a hammer a few hours before kickoff. It can be just as painful as that hammer to admit but they are also games that make college football great.
Though the other reason that game still lingers is because the video evidence from it – at least the official Penn State game tape – is still buried beneath the turf of the Penn State practice facility.
“We just grabbed a shovel and went out there,” Hackenberg told Chris Raymond in the 2025 Book Men In White: The Gutsy, Against-All-Odds Return of Penn State Football. “Buried the tape right on the edge of the practice field. Dug a ditch, tossed the tape in, covered it right up and kept moving.”
Penn State and Temple will play for the first time in Philadelphia on Saturday since that 27-10 game.
There will not be hammers at our tailgate.
vs 
Time: 12 p.m.
TV: ESPN2
Announcers: Anish Shroff, Andre Ware and Morgan Uber
Radio: Penn State Sports Network
Announcers: Steve Jones, Jack Ham, Brian Tripp
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