MORGANTOWN — There is a long-and-storied history between the West Virginia and Penn State football teams. It is a series that began in 1904 and was played annually from 1940 through 1992.
The Mountaineers and Nittany Lions are each others’ third-most played opponent. Both schools have played Pitt the most, Syracuse the second-most and each other third-most.
The teams have gone three decades without playing one another, however, and now their current head coaches, WVU’s Neal Brown and PSU’s James Franklin, have little interest in digging up ancient history.
“When you talk about history and you talk about recent history, I don’t think there’s been a game played while these (current players) were alive,” Franklin said Tuesday. “We talk about the history of the game and that’s what it is, it’s history.”
Penn State dominated the series with a 48-9-2 record against WVU, the Mountaineers’ second-worst winning percentage (.169) against any opponent they’ve played at least 10 times.
“I don’t know if it’s healthy for us to look at that,” Brown said last week. “I’m probably not going to dig too deep into that one.”
Despite the dismal record against PSU, the series has produced some good memories for WVU, such as the 1984 win in Morgantown and the 1988 victory as part of the team’s undefeated regular season. Those are WVU’s only two wins over Penn State since 1955, however.
“Coach (Don Nehlen) has some fond memories he’ll bring up, but the win-loss deal is not too favorable for the Mountaineers in this one,” Brown said.
For Franklin, his preseason focus has been on the No. 7 Nittany Lions and preparing them for the season.
“Although it would be nice to take some time and talk about the history of college football and the history of this region,” Franklin said, “there’s just not a whole lot of value in that in terms of getting our guys ready to play this game and be successful.”
The teams will play Saturday in State College (7:30 p.m., NBC) and next season in Morgantown, but after that, the series will go dormant again. With WVU’s proclaimed interest in scheduling Pitt as a non-conference opponent every year, it very well could be 30 more years until the series is dusted off again.
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