Penn State and UCF could be the next teams to bring college football overseas, with Bill O’Brien’s Nittany Lions and George O’Leary’s Knights potentially moving a 2014 matchup to Dublin, per the Bright House Sports Network.
Penn State, UCF reportedly working to start 2014 in Ireland
After the success of 2012’s game between Notre Dame and Navy in Ireland, more teams may head to the Emerald Isle.
Barry Cronin
The sides had already agreed to a home-and-home in 2013 and 2014, and UCF will play in Happy Valley on Sept. 14. This would move the end of the series scheduled for Orlando overseas. The game would be played in the opening week of the college football season due to the logistics of moving a team to the Emerald Isle and back, meaning the schools would have to mess around with previously scheduled games -- Penn State is scheduled to play Temple, UCF with FIU.
O’Brien had mentioned in February that an Ireland game was “definitely in the works.”
If they pull off the deal, it will be the fifth college football game played on Irish soil: games were played between various opponents in 1988 and 1989, and Notre Dame and Navy played games in 1996 and 2012, the most recent packing Aviva Stadium in Dublin with 35,000 American and 15,000 Irish fans to fill the rugby stadium built in 2010. The location of the 2014 game is still undecided.
O’Brien and O’Leary go back to 1995, when O’Leary -- then at Georgia Tech -- hired O’Brien as a graduate assistant, with O’Brien remaining on his staff for six seasons. As you can tell from the O’s, both O’Brien and O’Leary have Irish roots.
Although we’d lose the “woo America!” value of sending our naval academy’s team to play in Ireland, it should be noted that UCF is in the newly renamed American Athletic Conference, so, there’s your patriotism.
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