Penn State announced this week they will be renewing the football series with the Virginia Cavaliers in 2012-2013.
The teams are scheduled to meet September 8, 2012 in Charlottesville and September 14, 2013 in Beaver Stadium.
Astute BSD regular reader Nick asked your humble host the following question in the comments.
How do I feel about it? In a word, meh. On a lot of levels it makes sense. Virginia is a respectable school from a BCS conference. The game in Charlottesville will be easy to travel to for many PSU fans. The all time series, though short, has been competitive with Penn State holding a 5-3 advantage. It gives Penn State exposure south of the Mason-Dixon line which should help recruiting in that area. If we're as good as we claim to be, it should be a win for Penn State against a middle of the road ACC school. But the Lions need to be careful. Virginia has a history of usually upsetting one big opponent each year.
While Virginia is certainly better than Buffalo, Temple, or Youngstown State, even Virginia fans must admit they are not as impressive an opponent as say Notre Dame, Miami, or Nebraska. The game should get ESPN regional coverage, but we will not be watching this game in ABC prime time.
I would prefer to see a better opponent than Virginia. If we keep scheduling these series against local rivals like Virginia and Syracuse I'm going to start thinking the Pitt fans may have a point. We can justify not playing the Panthers when we're playing teams like Nebraska, Notre Dame, and Alabama. It gets a little harder when we schedule bottom feeding Big East and middle of the road ACC teams.
Of course nobody asked me who I would like to see on the schedule, and that's probably a good thing. My out of conference schedule on NCAA football for the PS2 usually consists of Texas, USC, and Notre Dame. And yes, the Morelli to Butler 8 yard out pattern is money, baby.