When did Penn State and SMU last play in football?

If nothing else, the College Football Playoff is going to give us some truly unique matchups, and none may be more historically divergent than the one between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the SMU Mustangs.

But have these schools played before? If not, why not? Who holds the lead in the series? And what makes them such disparate historical programs? Let's break it down.

Tale of the Tape: Despite playing football for a combined 233 years, Penn State and SMU have played each other all of twice. Once in 1979 and once in 1948. In 1979, Penn State beat SMU 26-21, while the fourth-ranked Nittany Lions and third-ranked Mustangs played to a 13-13 draw in the Cotton Bowl.

That's it. That's the list.

What's the Story? So why haven't these two teams played each other much before? For much of the early portion of the sport's existence, you won't find two more chaotic teams than the Nittany Lions and Mustangs. With the exception of two years in 1947 and 1948, the Mustangs' results were all over the map, but were largely fairly middle of the road. There were a lot of 6-4 seasons, a lot of 5-5 seasons, and also a lot of truly rancid seasons in Dallas.

Things weren't much more stable in State College; the Nittany Lions made just two bowl games between their program starting in 1889 and 1959. They were very seldom truly bad, but they also were very rarely all that good.

The Mustangs started to stabilize a little under Hayden Fry, who is better known as the legendary Iowa head coach, but results were still all over the map. Meanwhile, Penn State's fortunes were on the rise, as Rip Engle was succeeded by Joe Paterno, who built the Nittany Lions into a true college football powerhouse.

As the 70s rolled on into the 80s, the two programs could not have had more disparate reputations. Penn State were the upstanding pillar of the college football community; under Paterno, they had the reputation for winning "the right way," through tough, hard-nosed football and sturdy line play on both sides of the ball.

But as SMU entered their pony express era, the Mustangs were at the other end of the spectrum. They were the highfalutin nouveau riche of the late 70s and early 80s, loaded with super skilled Texas talent obtained through extralegal means (read: blatantly and shamelessly paying players). Even when both teams were good, the Nittany Lions wanted nothing to do with the Mustangs in the 80s.

And then it was over; the NCAA hit SMU with the death penalty in 1989, shuttering the program for a full two seasons. Since then, the Mustangs have been a shell of their former selves, failing to make any kind of significant impact, and then finding themselves trapped in the WAC, Conference USA and the AAC, too far from Penn State to ever play the Nittany Lions in a potential bowl game.

Penn State's Paterno era ended ingloriously as well, the facade of "the right way" washed away in one of the worst scandals in college football history that had nothing to do with anything on the field.

With the implementation of NIL, SMU are back in the ACC, and eager to splash their cash in a much more legal way.

Notable Matchups: The 1948 Cotton Bowl was a highly-anticipated clash between top five teams, with potential title implications. It ended in a tie, likely denying both teams the chance to claim a title, and started two decades of Penn State wandering in the bowlless wilderness.

Now, almost 80 years later, they're back on the big stage with a chance to announce their arrival to the college football world.

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