The Penn State Nittany Lions and UCF Knights are playing on the college football schedule on Saturday morning and the game is live from ESPN2 and the WatchESPN website at 8:30 am ET from Croke Park Stadium for the early matchup and the Big Ten side will take on Central Florida before opening at Beaver Stadium and this comes as the team has a new head coach for QB Christian Hackenberg and co.
Penn State starts the season with Central Florida before matching up with Rutgers and UMass and that is a manageable schedule for the team as they move on without Bill O'Brien. The Lions went 7-5 last season and performed well against the top 25 and while Hackenberg returns, Allen Robinson was drafted into the NFL to the Jaguars and that comes after he led the team in receiving.
Penn State has a very tough schedule through the middle part of the season, as they play against Northwestern before matchups with Michigan and Ohio State in back to back games. The game against the Wolverines is at the Big House and that will be tough and the team is coming in with high expectations after the sanctions from a couple years ago, as the Lions are finally pulling out of things and they have a very solid QB leading the way.
The team ends the season with a tough matchup against Michigan State and that comes after road games with Indiana and Illinois, while Temple is the home game between that. The east division in the conference is very tough and the Big Ten overall should be even better than they were last season and the Spartans are the team to watch, as they won the title last season and could do it again.
Last season Central Florida was great and they had a 12-1 record and a very strong defense and now they will have to bounce back after Blake Bortles went pro. Bortles had a strong season last year and used that to get picked in the top 10 of the NFL draft and he has some expectations, while the team was 2-1 against the top 25 and now they play a tough game against Penn State and then they also play against Missouri and they are ranked in the top 25 this season. The rest of the schedule is fairly easy compared to other teams in bigger conferences and they finish with two on the road, including one against South Florida.
Check here for the Penn State Nittany Lions and UCF Knights live coverage.
