Iowa football: The tight history between the Hawks and Penn State

Saturday afternoon will be the 28th time the Iowa football team has squared off against Penn State. Here is the history of this short Big Ten battle.

As we have noted all week, this game is incredibly important to the Iowa football team. There are Big Ten West title implications on the line. There are playoff implications on the line, and least tangibly, there are respect implications on the line. The Iowa football team needs a big statement win to show the College Football Playoff committee when they begin ranking teams.

This is the game, and what a perfect team for it to come against. In Iowa’s 27-game history against Penn State, there have been statement game opportunities that Iowa was able to capitalize on and statement game opportunities that Iowa blew in the waning seconds.

Back to back years in 2008 and 2009, the Iowa football team used big wins over #3 Penn State (24-23 on a last second field goal) and #5 Penn State (21-10 in Happy Valley) to propel them into a strong season. In 2008, Iowa would go on to finish 9-4 and 20th in the nation, and in 2009, the Iowa football team would go on to finish 11-2 and ranked 7th.

According to Kirk though, neither of those were as big as Iowa’s 2000 win over Penn State 26-23, which a case could be made that this really kick started the program into the Kirk Ferentz era. here is what Kirk had to say about each win in his Tuesday media conference.

"Two kind of different circumstances, just because in ’09 we were a more mature team. The ’08 game, I think everybody was getting ready to throw dirt on us. If they hadn’t already started, they were getting ready to fill the hole. We were 3-3, right? That was off the Illinois loss. Everybody started doing the math, these guys are going to be 5-7, if that.Anyway, every game is a new adventure. That team was trying to find their footing, whereas I think we had our footing in ’09. But I’ll tell you, as big as any of them was 2000. We were well-documented going into that season, that game, took double overtime or single, I can’t remember which. Hanson comes up with the ball."

In more recent history, however, Iowa has come up short. At Penn State in 2016 with Iowa sitting at 5-3, the Nittany Lions blew out the Hawkeyes 41-14 in embarrassing fashion. Fast forward a year and the Hawks had the #4 Lions on the ropes at Kinnick. With a lead heading into the final minutes, Penn State drove down the field and scored a touchdown on the very last play of the game. It was a soul-crushing loss for the Iowa football team.

Those last two wins are two in a string of four straight wins against Kirk Ferentz for Penn State bringing the series win/loss totals to 12 (Iowa) to 15 (Penn State). In fact, Iowa hasn’t beaten Penn State since 2010, but will this be the year Iowa turns it around?

I think so.