Penn State History Lesson: Penn State football’s 6-4 loss to No. 25 Iowa in 2004

While Penn State football has consistently ranked among the top teams in the country in recent seasons, you only have to look back 20 years to find a time when the Nittany Lions were the laughing stock of the Big Ten.

For five years at the turn of the century, the Nittany Lions found it difficult to get a postseason appearance. After success in the mid-1990s, Penn State hit a rough patch, playing in just one bowl game from 2000 to 2005 – a Capital One Bowl loss to Auburn in 2002.

The offensive woes of the early 2000s, highlighted by shaky quarterback play and inefficiencies, reached their peak on October 23, 2004, 20 years ago Wednesday, when Joe Paterno’s team took the field to face Iowa at home in Beaver Stadium No. 25 to compete. What followed was one of the strangest and downright ridiculous football games since the legalization of the forward pass.

Iowa got the ball first and gained five yards before punting at the 25-yard line. Disaster struck when punter David Bradley took a bad snap out of the back of the end zone for a safety and the Nittany Lions took an early 2-0 lead.

Michael Robinson caught Penn State’s first carry of the day for six yards on the only positive play of the Nittany Lions’ opening drive. Quarterback Zack Mills followed the run with an incompletion and a run for no gain as the blue and white sent the ball back to Iowa.

A Hawkeye three-pointer ended with a great return by Penn State’s Calvin Lowry that gave the Nittany Lions the lead at the Iowa 24-yard line. Two false start penalties, a sack, a recovered fumble and -9 yards later, Robbie Gould missed a 51-yard field goal attempt.

Iowa followed the miss with a seven-minute, 59-yard drive that ended in a field goal. At 20 yards, it was the longest drive of the game for both teams.

The next three drives totaled 36 yards before Mills’ interception put the ball within field goal range for Iowa. After winning nothing, the Hawkeyes settled for a field goal to take a 6-2 lead with 10 minutes left in the second quarter.

After a blocked field goal, Penn State had the ball at the Hawkeye 10-yard line midway through the third quarter. Boos rained down as Penn State’s stagnant offense once again settled for a field goal attempt that Gould missed from 25 yards.

The final score of the game came with just over eight minutes left due to one of the most bizarre strategic decisions in football.

After Robinson was intercepted on a pass to the end zone, Iowa had the ball at its eight-yard line. A sack pushed the Hawkeyes back to their goal line and instead of punting from the back of the end zone, head coach Kirk Ferentz played the field position play and took an intentional safety.

In giving up the points, Ferentz passed the ball to the Nittany Lions via a free kick, pushing them further back than if he had been beaten and daring the Penn State offense to move the ball.

Considering Penn State’s three interceptions, nearly 100 yards of offense and Gould’s two missed field goals, Ferentz was confident it was the right move.

“Safety was a given,” Ferentz said during his postgame press conference. “When you punt out of your own end zone, it’s like being three points safe.”

However, Robinson didn’t leave Ferentz in doubt for long and threw the ball back to the Hawkeyes on the next play.

The game had not yet been put on ice and Penn State’s defense forced the 14th punt of the game and gave the ball back to the offense at the Nittany Lion 20 yard line with one minute and 30 seconds left in the game.

The tragedy continued when Robinson fumbled the ball on the first play of the drive. The Hawkeyes rebounded to secure a 6-4 win over Penn State.

The finale combined balance sheet had 315 yards of offense, seven turnovers, 14 punts, 10 points and a 10-36 third-down conversion clip.

It wasn’t the first time a college football game ended in a 6-4 score, but that hadn’t happened since Purdue beat Indiana in 1955. Before that, Rutgers defeated Princeton 6-4 on November 6, 1869, in the first ever college football game.

“These were hopeless but perversely entertaining teams,” said David Jones of PennLive wrote after the game. “Determined defenses obviously play for their coordinators… and ridiculous offenses with no direction.”

Paterno had little to offer after the game. In the midst of a two-year break from the AP poll, his team was 2-5 and is on track for a second straight year without a postseason. Before failing in 2000 and 2001, the Nittany Lions had not missed a bowl game in two consecutive seasons since Paterno took over for Rip Engle in 1966.

“I don’t think we can play much worse than we did today,” Paterno told the media after the loss. “We just didn’t play that well offensively.”

After two more losses to Ohio State and Northwestern, Penn State faced a winless conference record. A goal-line stand at the end of a game at Indiana ended Penn State’s six-game losing streak, and the Nittany Lions followed with a 37-13 win over Michigan State to finish the season at 4-7.

But the historic loss to the Hawkeyes stood out, epitomizing a lackluster season while also providing the most forgettable, if entirely forgettable, game in Penn State history.

“You can spend a lifetime watching football and only hear about something 100,000 fans saw in person at Beaver Stadium,” Jones wrote. “People will inevitably lie years from now and say, ‘I was there.’ I saw the 6-4 game!’”