In my annual update for Iowa State’s record of football futility against Oklahoma, I realized Rutgers’ existence is a factor that can’t be ignored anymore. Specifically, Rutgers hasn’t beaten Penn State in New Jersey in a long time, dating back to when they played each other as independents. The Meadowlands was technically a neutral site, but much closer to Rutgers, and so I decided to make a parenthetical note about the neutral-site record. That meant I needed to tweak the Maryland-Penn State line in the same way.
I was going to make the “away” winless streak longer to match, and I saw a yearly contest has moved up a place after Kansas beat Texas*: Minnesota hasn’t held Paul Bunyan’s Axe since 2003, and Wisconsin has taken the lead in their all-time series. Now the graphics list the top nine by each type of streak (overall, home, and away).
Beyond that, there’s a three-way tie at nine games. They are Iowa State at Oklahoma, Vanderbilt at Auburn, and Purdue at Ohio State — and two aren’t scheduled in the remainder of the decade. That tie will be broken, one way or the other, when ISU goes to Norman on October 7.
There was some other action in that table too. Two games that very rarely happen — Kentucky at Alabama and Northwestern at Ohio State — both happened in 2016. Unfortunately for both sets of Wildcats, the opponent was in peak form. But their relative positions didn’t change, because Oregon State lost to USC in Los Angeles six times in eight years (1996-2003) for a high total.
This year and only until fall, Penn State-Maryland and Alabama-Kentucky have identical all-time records: 37-2-1. The first is now (or has returned as) an annual series, but ISU-OU has double the games played.
Sadly, shortly after I made my updates in March, CFB Data Warehouse went offline permanently. This is a huge loss.
*This really happened. In football.