So that leads to our 2012 LBU Videos season kickoff here at Linebacker-U.com. This is where we start throwing ideas against the wall for which games you’d like to see turned into our ever-popular 10 Minutes or Less series. For those of you not familiar (you should be!) with 10 MOL, what we do is take old Penn State football videos, chop them into highlight reels about 10 minutes in length, and post them to our YouTube account for easy viewing by Nittany Lions fans everywhere. Here’s a sample of what you’ll see:

But before we get onto your input, we will already cover the following opponents as part of our in-season coverage this fall:

Ohio University Bobcats
Virginia Cavaliers
Temple Owls
Navy Midshipmen
Illinois Fighting Illini
Northwestern Wildcats
Iowa Hawkeyes
Ohio State Buckeyes
Purdue Boilermakers
Nebraska Cornhuskers
Indiana Hoosiers
Wisconsin Badgers

So if we don’t follow up on a suggestion that includes one of those opponents, it doesn’t mean we won’t do that game for the fall season. See where I’m going with this?

This leaves the floor open to all of you. Which games do you want to see for this off-season season of 10 Minutes or Less? Send us a note with your suggestions!

Welcome to Linebacker-U.com’s annual (hopefully it stays an annual event) Special Bowl Game Edition of 10 Minutes or Less. This year, Penn State travels down to Dallas for the Ticket City Bowl, played in the old Cotton Bowl, against the Houston Cougars. These teams have met twice before this weekend, but only once in the modern era. Today we bring you the video highlights of that classic 1977 battle…

Back in the day, scheduling tough non-regional opponents was commonplace for major college football teams. Considering there were only 11 games to work with, and resume was everything in the eyes of the pollsters, it was a system that–for all its faults–gave fans and viewers more great matchups than ever before. Penn State obliged in its 1977 home opener, when the No. 9 Houston Cougars came to Happy Valley to face the No. 10 Nittany Lions.

Penn State was off a season-opening win over Rutgers in the Meadowlands of New Jersey. Houston was playing on a short week, as the Cougars season opener against UCLA was a victory on Monday night.

It was a classic battle between strength and speed, not at all unlike this weekend’s bowl game between these two teams. In 1977, Penn State played defense as everyone knew it could, while Houston played some of the best offensive football the nation had seen.

“Each team fought to overcome the other and the scoring lead was exchanged five times. Penn State running back and future NFL star Curt Warner rolled up 238 yards, nearly matching the entire Nebraska team ground production. Penn State pulled ahead on an early 4th quarter touchdown and added a field goal with 4:54 remaining to extend their lead to 6 points, and the Cornhuskers were unable to muster a response before time expired. Nebraska fell out of the rankings for the first time since a one week absence early in the 1977 season.” Penn State would crush No. 1 Pitt on the final game of the regular season, finish 10-2 and ranked #3 in the polls. Some suggested Penn State should have been the national champions that season.

When all was said and done, PSU had themselves a nice 49-0 victory, its first shutout since the 1999 Alamo Bowl against Texas A&M. Be on the lookout for a couple of shirtless cameo appearances by Yours Truly (Tim).

Brees had already become a household name, throwing for an NCAA record 83 pass attempts the previous week against Wisconsin (in which Brees also racked up nearly 500 yards passing). What Brees hadn’t faced up until this game however, was a defense the likes of Penn State’s. LaVar Arrington, Courtney Brown, Brandon Short, and a slew of other blue and white clad defensive studs were more than happy to introduce Brees to what a real defense looked like, and helped deliver a 31-13 shellacking on Homecoming weekend in Happy Valley.

It wasn’t just the defense of Penn State’s that highlighted that afternoon, as freshman tailback Eric McCoo had his first 100+ yard rushing game, tallying a grand total of 163 yards on the ground. McCoo also hauled in a 12-yard TD pass from Kevin Thompson. Special teams left a little more to be desired though, as a muffed punt and two blocked field goals stuck out like a sore thumb.

All in all though, it was the typical manhandling of Purdue that Penn State fans have long come to expect…Enjoy.

Yes, Iowa conidered these uniforms to be acceptable. Just ignore them.

Penn State was fresh off its 1994 NATIONAL TITLE. But without several of the best skill players ever to play in Happy Valley, the Nittany Lions dropped two early games. Entering Kinnick Stadium, Penn State was only 1-2 in the Big Ten, 5-2 overall. The Hawkeyes were actually ranked higher than Penn State, albeit by one spot in the polls.

In usual fashion, Penn State allowed the opposition to hang around for most of the game. And in what would eventually become usual fashion, Iowa took advantage of that lack of a killer instinct by the Nittany Lions, taking the lead in the second half. The game seemed to being slipping away from Penn State, but the offense just kept chugging along, wearing down the Hawkeye D. All the while, the Penn State defense forced a few big sacks and a critical turnover courtesy of soon-to-be All-American safety Kim Herring.

But the star of the show, at least in the second half, was Bobby Engram. The senior receiver torched the Hawkeye defense for 150 yards and two touchdowns in the second half. Those two scoring catches were good enough to entrench Engram as Penn State’s all-time leader in receiving touchdowns with 27.

Penn State finished the season on a 6-1 run, with only the epic win by Northwestern tarnishing what was a great home stretch. The Nittany Lions finished 9-3 after demolishing Auburn in the Citrus Bowl. The loss would send Iowa into a temporary tailspin, dropping four straight before recovering to finish 8-4 with a Sun Bowl win over Washington.

In the second game of the 2008 season, the 19th-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions, boasting 29 wins and three bowl victories in three seasons, played host to the Oregon State Beavers, who themselves were coming off 19 wins and two bowl victories in two seasons. Penn State was expected to be pretty decent in 2008, but with a new quarterback and young running back, and unproven linebackers on defense, the buzz around Happy Valley was tempered to say the least. Oregon State was a program that always overachieved, knocking off No. 2 USC in 2006. But the Beavers dropped their season opener at Stanford the week before heading to Beaver Stadium, diminishing the hype around the game against Penn State.

Led by first year starters quarterback Daryll Clark and running back Evan Royster, the Lions rolled to a 45-14 victory, on their way to the 2008 Big Ten Championship, Rose Bowl berth and an 11-2 record. The Beavers would recover from the loss, defeated No. 1 USC the very next week, and finished the year ranked No. 24 with nine wins.

In retrospect, this victory should go down as one of the most impressive performances by Penn State during the 2000s. Enjoy, but don’t get too excited and think we’ll see this kind of offensive efficiency again anytime soon…

Really, this game should have been a dogfight. Numerous mistakes inside the red zone, including a dropped catch by a Temple receiver who was wide open in the corner of the end zone on a fake field goal attempt, prevented the Owls from tacking on a couple of touchdowns that would have changed the course of the game. Yes, Temple would likely have lost in the end, but it would have been far more nerve-racking than it otherwise should’ve been. I’ll leave it at that and allow the video to fill you in on the rest: