Photo credit: sjsuspartans.com

By: Ana Kieu

The San Jose State Spartans finalized their non-conference football schedule through the 2021 season and agreed to a 2020 game against the Penn State Nittany Lions on Monday.

San Jose State and Penn State will meet for the first time in NCAA football in a road game at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania, on September 19, 2020.

Spartans’ director of athletics, Marie Tuite, made the announcement for SJSU.

“I know our student-athletes, coaches, alumni and friends of the program will look forward to playing Penn State in 2020,” said Tuite, whose football scheduling philosophy is to have SJSU play two home and two road non-conference regular season games each season.

With the addition of Penn State as a non-conference opponent, SJSU now has their future non-conference football schedules complete for the 2018 to 2021 seasons.

Penn State became the fifth team affiliated with the Big Ten Conference on a SJSU football schedule. Previously, SJSU played at Minnesota four times between 1991 and 2014, at Ohio State in 2002 and twice at Wisconsin in 1997 (in San Jose, California) and 2010 (in Madison, Wisconsin). SJSU also played at Nebraska twice before the Cornhuskers joined the Big Ten.

The SJSU at Penn State matchup will be one of five Eastern Time Zone games during the 2019 through 2021 seasons. SJSU will travel to Army West Point for games in 2019 and 2021, Central Michigan and Penn State in 2020 and Georgia in 2021.