2025 Pinstripe Bowl
The 2025 Pinstripe Bowl was a college football bowl game played on December 27, 2025, at Yankee Stadium in Bronx, New York. The 15th annual Pinstripe Bowl began at approximately 12:00 p.m. EST and aired on ABC. The Pinstripe Bowl was one of the 2025–26 bowl games concluding the 2025 FBS football season. The game was sponsored by lawn mower manufacturing company Bad Boy Mowers, and was officially known as the Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl.
[2025 2025 Penn State Nittany Lions football team|Penn State Nittany Lions football team|Penn State] of the Big Ten Conference beat [2025 2025 Clemson Tigers football team|Clemson Tigers football team|Clemson] of the Atlantic Coast Conference by a score of 22–10.
Teams
The bowl was a matchup of preseason favorites. In the preseason AP poll rankings, Penn State had been ranked second, with 23 first place votes, while Clemson had been ranked fourth, with four first place votes. However, both teams ended the season unranked. Scott Dochterman of The Athletic dubbed the matchup "The Disappointment Bowl", while Bill Connelly of ESPN.com quipped, "at least Dabo Swinney is a Yankees fan," in reference to the bowl's venue being the home ballpark of the New York Yankees.The two teams had met only once before this Pinstripe Bowl matchup, a 35–10 Clemson victory in the 1988 Citrus Bowl.
Penn State Nittany Lions
Penn State opened their season with three consecutive wins, but then suffered six losses in a row, with three of those losses being to ranked opponents. The Nittany Lions finished with three consecutive wins, and entered the Pinstripe Bowl with a 6–6 record.Penn State was led in the bowl game by interim head coach Terry Smith; he took over in mid-October, following the dismissal of 12th-year head coach James Franklin.