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Christopher Boan has been covering sports and sports betting for more than seven years, including stops at ArizonaSports.com, the Tucson Weekly and the Green Valley News.
How Does Penn State Historically Perform at the Orange Bowl?
The Penn State Nittany Lions and their opponents in the College Football Playoff semifinal round will each be making their sixth appearance in the Orange Bowl when the two college football powers meet in Miami Gardens on Jan. 9.
For the Nittany Lions, this yearās appearance in the Orange Bowl represents the Big Ten programās first trip to South Florida since the 2005 Orange Bowl, when Penn State beat FSU, 26-23, capping off an 11-1 campaign in Happy Valley across Pennsylvania sports betting.
This year, head coach James Franklin and company enter the CFP semis off consecutive playoff wins over SMU (38-10) and Boise State (31-14), while the Notre Dame Fighting Irish have beaten Indiana (27-17) and Georgia (23-10) to reach the semifinal round of the event.
Currently, the team at DraftKings Sportsbook PA have the Nittany Lions down as a 1.5-point underdog in the Orange Bowl, with a +102 moneyline on Penn State compared with -122 odds on the Fighting Irish.
At PennStakes.com, we wanted to take a look at how the two teams have historically performed at the Orange Bowl. Using Sports-Football-Reference.com, we found the win/loss percentage for both teams. The school results are over the entire history of the Orange Bowl starting in 1935.
Orange Bowl School Historical Results
School | Win-Loss % |
Penn State Nittany Lions | .800 |
Notre Dame Fighting Irish | .400 |
*Each school has played in 5 Orange Bowls
While both programs are making their sixth trip to the Orange Bowl this year, the teamsā results in those contests are quite different, with Penn State going 4-1 so far - while Notre Dame is 2-3 in their past five trips to Miami.
In Penn Stateās previous five trips to the Orange Bowl, their only defeat came in 1985, when the Nittany Lions lost their lone game of an 11-1 campaign against Oklahoma by a 25-10 final score, with wins in the 1968, 1969, 1973 and 2005 editions of the postseason staple.
For the Irish, the programās two wins came in 1974 under legendary head coach Ara Parseghian and in 1989, with defeats in 1973, 1990 and 1995, illustrating how tough the South Florida game has been on the South Bend institution over the years.
For now, both Penn State and Notre Dame will look to secure a spot in the inaugural CFP championship game of the eventās 12-team era when they square off inside Hard Rock Stadium at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time on Jan. 9.
USA Today photo by Joe Camporeale.
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