Ohio State Vs. Penn State: A History Of Violence

SB Nation’s Black Shoe Diaries reviews the gory, storied history of the Buckeyes-Nittany Lions rivalry:

The year was 1912. Penn State was coming off of an 8-0-1 season in 1911, their greatest record to date. They had made the jump from a respectable team to an eastern power that was beating traditional eastern powers like Pitt, Penn, and Cornell. Under the direction of head coach Bill Hollenback Penn State was facing unprecedented success. But Hollenback had bigger ambitions. He wanted to take Penn State from being an eastern power to a national power. To do that, he looked west.
Ohio State was set to join the Western Conference (which would later become the Big Ten Conference) starting the following year. While they had enjoyed several successful years in the Ohio Athletic Conference, many questioned their worthiness to join the Western Conference due to the poor level of competition. Ohio State coach John Richards felt that a win over an eastern team would give his team more prestige and quiet their critics.
So on November 16, 1912 the two schools of Penn State and Ohio State met for the first time in Columbus, Ohio not realizing how intense this rivalry would become nearly 100 years later.