While Penn State football has been a perennial top team in the nation for the past few seasons, one only has to go back 20 years to find a time when the Nittany Lions were the laughingstock of the Big Ten.

For five years at the turn of the century, a postseason appearance for the Nittany Lions was hard to come by. After the success of the mid-1990s, Penn State hit a rough patch, making just one bowl game from 2000 to 2005 — a Capital One Bowl loss to Auburn in 2002.

The offensive struggles of the early 2000s, highlighted by shaky quarterback play and inefficiencies, came to a head on October 23, 2004 — 20 years ago on Wednesday — when Joe Paterno’s team took the field to face No. 25 Iowa at home in Beaver Stadium. What followed was one of the strangest and downright ridiculous games of football since the legalization of the forward pass.

Iowa got the ball first and gained five yards before punting on its 25-yard line. Disaster struck as punter David Bradley kicked a bad snap out of the back of the end zone for a safety and the Nittany Lions took an early 2-0 lead.

Michael Robinson took Penn State’s first carry of the day for six yards on the only positive play of the Nittany Lions’ opening drive. Quarterback Zack Mills followed up the run with an incompletion and a run for no gain as the blue and white punted the ball back to Iowa.

A Hawkeye three-and-out ended with a big return from Penn State’s Calvin Lowry that set the Nittany Lions up at the Iowa 24-yard line. Two false start penalties, a sack, a recovered fumble, and -9 yards later, Robbie Gould missed a 51-yard field goal attempt.

Iowa followed the miss with a seven-minute, 59-yard drive that ended in a field goal. It was the longest drive of the game from either team by 20 yards.

The next three drives went for a combined 36 yards before Mills’ interception gave Iowa the ball within field goal range. After gaining nothing, the Hawkeyes settled for a field goal and took a 6-2 lead with 10 minutes left in the second quarter. 

After a blocked field goal, Penn State had the ball at the Hawkeye 10-yard line at the midpoint of the third quarter. Boos rained down as a stagnant Penn State offense once again settled for a field goal attempt, which Gould missed from 25 yards.

The final score of the game came with just over eight minutes left on one of the most bizarre strategy calls in football. 

After Robinson was intercepted on a pass to the end zone, Iowa had the ball at its eight-yard line. A sack pressed the Hawkeyes back on their goal line and instead of punting from the back of their end zone, head coach Kirk Ferentz played the field-position game and took an intentional safety.

By giving up the points, Ferentz gave the ball to the Nittany Lions on a free kick, pushing them back farther than if it was punted and daring the Penn State offense to move the ball.

Factoring in Penn State’s three interceptions, barely 100 yards of offense, and Gould’s two missed field goals, Ferentz was confident it was the right move. 

“The safety was a no-brainer,” Ferentz said during his postgame press conference. “If you punt from your own end zone, it’s like guaranteeing three points.”

Robinson didn’t leave Ferentz in doubt for long, though, and tossed the ball back to the Hawkeyes on the very next play.

The game wasn’t iced yet, and Penn State’s defense forced the game’s 14th punt, giving the offense the ball back at the Nittany Lion 20-yard line with a minute and 30 seconds left in the game.

The tragedy continued as Robinson fumbled the ball on the first play of the drive. The Hawkeyes recovered, sealing a 6-4 win over Penn State.

The final combined tally was 315 yards of offense, seven turnovers, 14 punts, 10 points, and a 10-36 third-down conversion clip.

It wasn’t the first time a college football game ended with a 6-4 scoreline, but it hadn’t happened since Purdue downed Indiana in 1955. The only other recorded instance is when Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 on November 6, 1869, in the first-ever college football game.

“These were hopeless, yet perversely entertaining teams,” PennLive’s David Jones wrote after the game. “Resolute defenders obviously playing for their coordinators…and laughable offenses with no direction.”

Paterno had little to offer postgame. In the middle of a two-year hiatus from the AP Poll, his team was 2-5 and well on its way to a second-straight year without a postseason. Before missing in 2000 and 2001, the Nittany Lions hadn’t missed a bowl game in back-to-back seasons since Paterno took over for Rip Engle in 1966.

“I don’t think we can play much poorer than we did today,” Paterno told the media after the loss. “We just didn’t play very well offensively.”

After two more losses to Ohio State and Northwestern, Penn State stared at a winless conference record. A goal-line stand at the end of a game at Indiana broke Penn State’s six-game losing streak, and the Nittany Lions followed it up with a 37-13 win over Michigan State, ending the season at 4-7.

But the historic loss to the Hawkeyes stood out, personifying a lackluster season while creating the most unforgettable, yet completely forgettable game in Penn State history.

“You can take a lifetime watching football and only hear about something that 100,000 fans witnessed in person in Beaver Stadium,” Jones wrote. “People will inevitably lie and say years from now, ‘I was there. I saw the 6-4 game!’”