FROSTING

The Penn State football team is coming off of an 11-2 campaign in 2008 that included a second conference title in four seasons, a berth in The Rose Bowl and the emergence of junior quarterback Darryl Clark as the Big Ten's Offensive MVP, but if the buzz surrounding the upcoming season is somewhat muted, blame the schedule.

While predictions for how the Nittany Lions will perform in defense of their conference crown are varied, the opinions on the schedule are consensus - it stinks. The Lions can't help the fact that the Big Ten appears to be short on contenders, but their non-conference schedule is truly atrocious. The four out-of-league opponents, Akron, Syracuse, Temple and Eastern Illinois, combined for just 12 wins against FBS competition last season, and none of them finished the year at .500 or better. Mix in the fact that all four of those games are at home and you've got a recipe for cupcakes.

That got us at The Floating Lion thinking about what were some of the weakest schedules the Lions have faced since Joe Paterno took over the program. It's easy to remember the many loaded schedules over the decades like 1982 (Pitt, Nebraska, Alabama, Notre Dame, West Virginia, Boston College) 1990 (Texas, USC, Notre Dame, Alabama, Pitt, Boston College) and 1999 (Pitt, Miami, Arizona, Ohio State, Michigan, Purdue, Michigan State) to name a few, but how about the bad ones? And, is 2009 the worst Penn State schedule of all time?

We've come up with a list of some of the team's weakest schedules, all in the hopes of putting this season's abomination in its proper place among the other soft lineups. We'll present each of them to you, before putting the question to a vote to find out which was the worst schedule of the last 45 years. Stay tuned...