For the past couple of years, I have used this Lions Tale weekly post to reminisce about Penn State football.
Usually, that means looking back at a classic – or sometimes forgotten – game in Nittany Lion lore with that week’s opponent.
Now entering Year 3 of this weekly series, things might sometimes take a bit of a left turn from what you normally would expect. With some teams on the schedule, there aren’t any sort of “classics” to recall – or any game at all in the case of this week’s opponent. Other
times, it might be that something larger in the Penn State sphere that requires some context aside from that week’s individual scheduled adversary.
This week, Penn State welcomes Nevada to Beaver Stadium to open the 2025 season. The Lions and Wolf Pack have never played previously. Nevada is one of 12 football-playing members of the Mountain West Conference.
With that in mind, I looked at how the Lions had fared against the conference. The answer is a perfect 6-0 record with wins over four of the teams, including a perfect 3-0 mark against Air Force.
The last time Penn State beat a team from the Mountain West? Well, we don’t have to go back very far at all. You’ll remember the night well: December 31, 2024.
That’s right. You’ll recall last year’s Fiesta Bowl, which doubled as a College Football Playoff quarterfinal. Penn State went to the desert to play the highest rated G5 team – in what will turn out to be the one and only year – where the first round playoff byes went exclusively to conference champions.
Penn State rolled to a 31-14 win in its last outing of the 2024 calendar year. They’ll look for win No. 1 against a school (I neglect to say team since Nevada has had so much turnover) that battled Boise to a 28-21 loss last season.
Speaking of that win against the Broncos though. They’ll be things from that game that we’ll hope to see this Saturday (and all season): breakaway Singleton runs, Kaytron Allen gobbling up yards, Drew throwing for three scores, the secondary coming up with interceptions, and the defense, in general, being tough to move the ball against.
Of course, that game also showed some warts that the Lions will want to clean up to reach their goals of being a championship team: Allar was just 13-of-25 and had a critical fumble with Penn State in position to break the game wide open. There was miscommunication on defense, allowing Boise to hit a long touchdown play to stay in the game. Many will also point to Andy Kotelnicki’s getting “too cute” with Penn State clearly being able to overpower the Broncos.
This 2025 season kicks off against a brand new opponent. But, there are certainly some ties to the last time we felt happy after a Penn State game. This time around, a game against a Mountain West opponent is just a chance to see where this team stands after camp, rather than a chance to hoist a trophy and celebrate a school-record 13th win of the season.
