The Penn State Nittany Lions (Lady Lions for women's basketball only) are the athletic teams of Pennsylvania State University. The school colors are blue and white. The school mascot is the Nittany Lion. The Intercollegiate Athletics Logo was commissioned in 1983.
Penn State participates in the NCAA Division I FBS and in the Big Ten Conference for most sports. Penn State is one of only 15 universities in the nation that plays Division I FBS football and Division I men's ice hockey. A few sports participate in different conferences because they are not sponsored by the Big Ten: men's lacrosse in the Colonial Athletic Association, women's lacrosse in American Lacrosse Conference, and men's volleyball in the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA). The women's ice hockey team, competing for the first time at the varsity level in the 2012-13 season, plays in College Hockey America. The fencing teams operate as independents.
Penn State has finished in the top 25 in every NACDA Director's Cup final poll, a feat only matched by nine other institutions: Stanford, UCLA, USC, Florida, Ohio State, Texas, North Carolina, and Michigan. The NACDA Director's Cup is a list compiled by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics that charts institutions' overall success in college sports. Penn State's highest finish came in the 1998-1999 standings when the Nittany Lions finished 3rd. PSU finished in 9th place in the 2007-08 standings, the most recent top-ten finish. It was the eighth time the program finished in the top 10.
Read more about Penn State Nittany Lions: Current Varsity Sports Programs, Current Intercollegiate Club Sports, National Championships, Big Ten Championships, Olympians, Facilities, Penn State All-Sports Museum, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words penn, state and/or lions:
“They have a right to censure that have a heart to help: the rest is cruelty, not justice.”
—William Penn (1644–1718)
“Though seen but once, it helps to wash out State Street and the engine’s soot.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen would draw them to look like oxen, and each would make the gods bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.”
—Xenophanes (c. 570–478 B.C.)