Auburn and Penn State Announce Home-and-Home football series in 2021 and 2022.|AU Hot Topics|Team BattleGround|College BattleGround

If you’re looking for great non-conference match-ups against teams from conferences the Tigers don’t usually play… well, you may be a bit disappointed in this one.

Auburn has announced a home-and-home series with Penn State, to be played at Beaver Stadium on September 18th, 2021 and at Jordan-Hare Stadium September 17th, 2022. That is keeping with Auburn’s current scheduling practices of playing a road P5 team during even years when under current scheduling criteria the Tigers host Alabama and Georgia.

If you’re wondering about the 2021 game with Cal, as some did, since the two games were scheduled for the same day, it has reportedly been moved to 2023. The 2020 game is, however, still on. The Tigers play Oregon in 2019 and are still looking for a P5 opponent in 2018.

Instant Reaction

Sure, right from the start, the whole “Auburn hasn’t played a Big Ten team in the regular season since 1931” thing (thanks for that bit of trivia, Tuco) is awesome and makes this fun. However, the Tigers often play B1G teams in bowl games and have played the Nittany Lions as recently as 2003.

I also just realized how long ago 2003 is. Ok, nevermind, GET HYPED!

The two teams have played only twice in both of their long and storied histories. One was a 43-14 drubbing by Penn State in the 1996 Outback Bowl, and the other was a 13-9 Auburn victory over Penn State in the 2003 Capital One Bowl.

Really, though, playing teams we don’t normally see – and particularly getting them in a home-and-home series (the 2018 and 2019 home-and-home with Oregon was RIGHT THERE, y’all!!!) – is fun and exciting. It sure beats playing Clemson for the umpteenth time in the last 15 years.

I like this move. I hope that scheduling continues to reflect this trend of getting P5 opponents that we don’t often play or have never played. I’m still hoping for that Notre Dame game, someday.

So what do you think?