With Big Ten Media Days over and the start of training camp just days away, we’re now officially in the heart of college football’s “talking season.” Among the topics that consistently reemerge during this time of year is the possibility of Penn State football renewing its storied rivalry with Pitt.
James Franklin was asked about the game, which hasn’t been played since 2019, yet again on Wednesday. While the Nittany Lions’ head coach is open to revisiting the conversation, changes would first need to be made to the college football scheduling model.
“I love out-of-conference scheduling discussions,” Franklin said, perhaps somewhat facetiously. “I’d be all about a discussion about Pitt. We have played Pitt non-conference, we played West Virginia non-conference, we played Auburn non-conference, and had success in all that.
“The good thing is, we all have the ability to build our programs the way we see best. Coach [Pat Narduzzi] has the ability to build his program how he thinks best. And we have the ability to do that at Penn State as well.”
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A common theme in his larger comments on the topic, Franklin called for uniformity in conference scheduling before reopening the discussion on non-conference matchups.
“The thing that I struggle with is the same thing I’ve been talking about for a long time, and this doesn’t change,” he said. “Everybody has to play the same number of conference games. Like, this ain’t that hard, right? Everybody should be playing eight, or everybody should be playing nine.”
You can watch Franklin’s full comments below.
Franklin’s comments come following Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi’s recent call to renew the rivalry on an annual basis.
“That Penn State-Pitt one, which we’re still trying to figure out why we don’t play that game still — we should be playing West Virginia and Penn State every single year,” Narduzzi said in May. “I’ll go on record saying I’m ready to go right now. Let’s line it up. Especially these two next years we have here where we’re not playing anybody.”
Penn State and Pitt have played 100 times since 1893, a series that the Nittany Lions lead 53-43-4. The Blue and White went 3-1 when the rivalry returned for a four-year stretch between 2016 and 2019.
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