Penn State will be wearing its road whites for its Rose Bowl matchup against Utah Jan. 2, the Rose Bowl game announced in a tweet Wednesday.
There are no “home” or “away” teams in the Rose Bowl Game, but the team that’s ranked higher gets to wear its home uniforms.
Penn State was ranked higher than USC coming into its last Rose Bowl Game appearance at the end of the 2016 season, and thus wore its home blue uniforms. Penn State lost to the Trojans, 52-49.
At the end of the 2008 season, Penn State entered the Rose Bowl ranked lower than USC and thus wore its road whites. USC beat Penn State, 28-24.
Penn State was ranked higher than Oregon ahead the Jan. 2, 1995 Rose Bowl Game but wore its road whites anyway and beat the Ducks, 38-20. This time around, Utah is ranked No. 8 and Penn State
No. 11 despite the Utes having one more loss than Penn State and the same amount of wins. But advantage Utah has over Penn State is that it won the Pac-12. Penn State didn’t win the Big Ten and didn’t even place in the top two of the Big Ten East this season. The top two teams in the division, No. 2 Michigan and No. 4 Ohio State, each made it to the College Football Playoff and each beat Penn State. Michigan dominated Penn State, 41-17, Oct. 15 in Ann Arbor, and Ohio State fended off Penn State, 44-31, two weeks later.
The 109th Rose Bowl Game is scheduled to kickoff at 5 p.m. ET Jan. 2 on ESPN.
