2020 Iowa Football at Penn State Game Center

The Iowa Hawkeyes are officially back from the dead. After a pair of disappointing losses in the first two weeks of the year, Iowa has posted back-to-back beatings of Michigan State and Minnesota. The Hawkeyes thoroughly demolished the Gophers on a Friday night in week 4 and now enter the second half of the regular season at .500 on the year.

In a normal year, sitting at .500 and heading to State College to take on Penn State would not be a recipe for happy Iowa fans. However, it’s 2020 and the Nittany Lions enter this week’s matchup at 0-4.

Everything you need to know about Iowa’s matchup with Penn State can be found in the below stream.

Date: Saturday, November 21st
Time: 2:30pm CT
Matchup: Iowa Hawkeyes (2-2) at Penn State Nittany Lions (0-4)
Location: Beaver Stadium, University Park, PA
TV: BTN
Line: Pick ‘Em, O/U 45.5
Result: W, 41-21

History

Iowa and Penn State don’t have quite the lengthy history of many Big Ten teams due to the relatively short amount of time the Nittany Lions have been in the league (relative to the actual Big Ten, but much longer than the noobs from Nebraska and Rutgers). What history there is, however, has been quite good.

Kirk Ferentz holds an 8-8 career record against Penn State. Unfortunately, it’s been a while since we’ve seen an Iowa win in this series. After completely owning Joe Paterno to the tune of an 8-3 record through 2011 (including the bleak years at the outset of Ferentz’s career), the Hawkeyes haven’t beaten the Lions since the storied coach departed.

Iowa has lost 6 straight to PSU, including all five meetings against Bill O’Brien and current head coach James Franklin. The Hawkeyes haven’t beaten Penn State in a decade and haven’t won in State College since 2009.

This is a different Penn State team, however, which comes in at 0-4. This is just the second time in school history the Nittany Lions have started a season 0-4 (the other being 2001). We’ll see if Ferentz can break the 6-year losing streak on Saturday.