Through its branding and the various ways it chooses to present itself, Penn State football is, in its own words, “unrivaled.”
Succinct as it is, that phrase can have a number of different meanings. Between their long and storied history, their championship pedigree, the size of their stadium and alumni base, and their financial commitment to football, the Nittany Lions have few peers across all of college football.
There’s another, more literal interpretation of the word.
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Despite its decorated history, one that dates back to 1887, Penn State doesn’t have a singular, unquestioned rival, or at least one that the majority of its fan base would consider to be one. For the past 30 years, the Nittany Lions have competed with Ohio State and Michigan for Big Ten championships, but both of those programs have other, more bitter rivals — namely, each other. They share a border and long history with Maryland, but the series between the two is comically lopsided, with Penn State holding a 43-3-1 record in those games. The Nittany Lions have played Pitt more than any other opponent, but they’ve matched up with the Panthers only four times since 2000.
Among that group of schools that could be considered a rival to Penn State is West Virginia. A fellow flagship university from a bordering state, the Mountaineers were a fixture of the Nittany Lions’ schedule last century.
On Saturday, they’ll meet again, with No. 8 Penn State making the relatively short trip down to Morgantown to take on West Virginia in front of what should be a spirited crowd to open up the 2024 season.
Heading into that matchup, here’s what you need to know about the Penn State-West Virginia rivalry:
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When was the first Penn State-West Virginia game?
Penn State and West Virginia played their first game against one another all the way back in 1904, with the Nittany Lions coming away with a 34-0 victory.
In fact, it wouldn’t be until the sixth meeting between the programs that the Mountaineers would even score a point, as Penn State won the first five contests by a combined score of 102-0.
With campuses separated by only about 180 miles, Penn State and West Virginia played every year but one from 1904-09, with all five games held in State College. When they faced off again in 1923, a game that ended in a 13-13 tie took place at Yankee Stadium in New York.
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Who leads the Penn State-West Virginia series?
The Nittany Lions and Mountaineers have 60 previous meetings, making the Mountaineers the Nittany Lions’ second-most commonly played opponent in program history, behind only Pitt and Syracuse.
Penn State leads the series 49-9-2. The Nittany Lions have won 33 of the past 35 matchups, including a 38-15 victory in the 2023 season opener at Beaver Stadium.
Why did Penn State and West Virginia stop playing?
The force that drove the Nittany Lions and Mountaineers apart is the same one that killed off many college football rivalries, or at least made them much more infrequent — conference realignment.
After playing 51 times from 1940-92, Penn State and West Virginia wouldn’t meet again until they played last season in State College.
The timing of that break isn’t coincidental. For decades, the Nittany Lions and Mountaineers were independents. Since they were untethered to a specific conference, they had much greater schedule flexibility without having two-thirds or more of their available games occupied by teams from within their league.
In the early 1990s, that changed. West Virginia joined the Big East ahead of the 1991 season, though it continued to play Penn State in its first two seasons in the conference. A more consequential domino fell in 1993, when the Nittany Lions ended a 106-year run as an independent and began play in the Big Ten. With eight of its 11 games taken up by Big Ten opponents, Penn State didn’t keep some of its longer-standing series like Pitt and West Virginia on the schedule on a year-to-year basis.
“The renewal of our West Virginia rivalry is a series our alumni and fans have wanted to see on our future schedules,” then-Penn State athletic director Dave Joyner said in a statement in 2013, when the games for 2023 and 2024 were announced. “I am appreciative of the efforts of (then-West Virginia athletic director) Oliver Luck in getting our two schools together again.”
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When do Penn State and West Virginia play again?
Though the 2023 and 2024 meetings renewed what had been a long-dormant rivalry, the experience of watching Penn State and West Virginia share a football field will be short-lived.
Beyond Saturday’s game, there are no future matchups scheduled between the Nittany Lions and Mountaineers.
Both teams play in conferences — Penn State the Big Ten, West Virginia the Big 12 — with nine-game league schedules, leaving only three out-of-conference opportunities. Over the next four years, the Nittany Lions have just one non-conference opponent from the Power Four leagues, Syracuse in 2027 and 2028. The Mountaineers have been a bit more ambitious, with games against Pitt in 2025, Alabama in 2026 and 2027, Tennessee in 2028 and Pitt again from 2029-32.
What channel is Penn State vs West Virginia on?
- TV channel: Fox
- Streaming: Fox Sports app | FoxSports.com | Fubo (free trial)
The game between the Nittany Lions and Mountaineers will kick off at noon ET and air on Fox.
Streaming options for the matchup include the Fox Sports app, FoxSports.com and Fubo, the last of which offers a free trial to potential subscribers.
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