Senior DT Antonio Shelton discusses rivalry with Ohio State
Sometimes, even good memories can evoke mixed feelings. That’s how Antonio Shelton regards Penn State’s 24-21 upset of second-ranked Ohio State in 2016, a game that lingers fondly in the minds of all Nittany Lion fans but, at least in Shelton’s view, has come to overshadow a lot of the other accomplishments that followed.
“I know everybody likes to talk about that 2016 game because of how big it was for the program, and we’ve been ranked every week since that game,” the fifth-year senior defensive tackle said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning. “But to be honest with you, I’m kind of tired of talking about it. I’m not coming at you for bringing it up. I’m just not too big on dwelling on the past, I guess. I understand what it did for this program. I was here, I saw the change in the program literally before my eyes. It’s just like, OK, yes, that happened. Now what?”
Shelton went on to cite Penn State’s subsequent achievements, which include three 11-win seasons in the past four years. But his question – now what? – looms large this week with Ohio State headed back to Beaver Stadium. Because while the Nittany Lions went on to win a Big Ten championship in 2016, they haven’t been able to take that next step to the College Football Playoff, and the Buckeyes have been their biggest impediment.
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Shelton played his high school football at Westerville-North, just outside of Columbus, so he knows the Buckeyes’ lore well. He knows that their rivalry with Penn State will never be like their rivalry with Michigan, even though the PSU-OSU series has been more competitive lately than the Buckeyes’ increasingly lopsided series against the Wolverines. In fact, Shelton doesn’t even consider the Penn State-Ohio State series to be a rivalry. To him, it’s just another matchup between two established Big Ten powers.
“We’re a good team, they’re a good team,” he said. “I can understand how people could try to make it into something like that. Me saying it’s not a rivalry, it’s not me downplaying our opponent or disrespecting Ohio State in any sort of way. I’m not the type of person to downplay my opponent. That’s not smart. But I don’t necessarily think that this is a rivalry. This is two good football teams who are playing each other. That’s it. They have great players, we have great players. There are great coaches on both sides. Both programs are very historic, very storied. I just think it’s two great football teams who get to play each other on Saturday.”
Of the 118 players on Penn State’s current roster, only six were on the team in 2016 when it stunned the Buckeyes in an upset that brought the program roaring back into national prominence after four years in the wilderness following the imposition of major NCAA sanctions. Those half-dozen players – Shelton, fellow defensive linemen Shane Simmons and Shaka Toney, offensive linemen Michal Menet and Will Fries and walk-on receiver Isaac Lutz – all redshirted that year as true freshmen.
And if Penn State’s roster has undergone a near-total overhaul since that memorable season, so too has Ohio State’s. Most of the people who will man the Buckeyes’ sideline this Saturday were nowhere near Beaver Stadium the last time the Nittany Lions pulled out a victory in this series. Justin Fields was a junior at Harrison High in Georgia and was mulling a scholarship offer he had received from Penn State the previous summer. Ryan Day was in the midst of his one and only season as a member of Chip Kelly’s staff with the San Francisco 49ers.
To Penn State, that 2016 game, the one-point losses that followed the next two years, and even the 11-point loss in Columbus last season, feel like signs that there’s a bridgeable gap between the two programs, not a yawning chasm. Whatever you call it, whether it’s a rivalry or just another game, the Nittany Lions have played the Buckeyes closer than anyone else in the Big Ten the past few years and can’t help but take some encouragement from that trend, even though they haven’t been able to replicate the magic of that October night in 2016.
“We’ve had an opportunity to win some of those games that went right down to the wire,” coach James Franklin said. “One year we were able to step up and get it done, and other years they were able to. So, you know, we’re going to continue to build on that. We look forward to having a tightly contested game on Saturday. But it’s a challenge, there’s no doubt about it. We’ve got a lot of respect for their program, got a lot of respect for their history and what they’ve been able to do, and obviously they’ve got as talented a roster as [anyone] in the country.”
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