What is the opening Penn State-Iowa point spread? The initial number is out

Penn State football goes on the road to Iowa next Saturday for a primetime clash with the Hawkeyes at Beaver Stadium. It marks the Nittany Lions’ second road trip of the season. But, it will be its first game in three years without Drew Allar under center. The senior quarterback is now out for the year. Redshirt freshman Ethan Grunkemeyer is taking over for now. And, it is the first time in 12 years that James Franklin won’t lead the Lions into a game day. He was fired on Sunday. Terry Smith is the interim head coach.

While Penn State is fresh off a 22-21 loss to Northwestern, the Hawkeyes are coming off a 37-0 win over Wisconsin. Running back Xavier Williams scored a pair of touchdowns as head coach Kirk Ferentz’s team totaled four rushing scores overall and held the Badgers to just 209 yards of total offense in the blow out, shut out win.

“Obviously, really pleased with the effort from our team tonight,” Ferentz said. “Really proud of how the guys played. Looking backwards I think the guys handled the bye week extremely well, and then when we got back to work getting ready for this ballgame I thought the week of preparation went really well. Happy about that and most importantly the guys showed up at kickoff.

“We played really hard. It wasn’t perfect but the guys made some things happen. It was good to see the takeaways; we hadn’t had an abundance of those this year and we got a couple tonight. Most importantly, we made the takeaways turn into points.”

What is the Penn State-Iowa point spread?

Iowa opens as a 3-point favorite at BetMGM. The betting over/under total is 38.5.

It marks the first time that Penn State is a regular season underdog to someone other than Ohio State or Michigan since 2021. The Lions were also an underdog against the Hawkeyes then, too. Ferentz’s team won outright, 23-20, as a 2.5-point favorite, according to OddsShark.

Penn State is 6-2 in its last eight meetings with Iowa. Besides the 2021 loss, the Lions also fell to the Hawkeyes in 2020 by a final score of 41-21.

According to BetIQ, the Lions are the only college football team to not yet cover a point spread this season. They are 0-6 against the number. Penn State gave up the spread on the final play of the Villanova game. Otherwise, they have not been relatively close to covering for betting backers this season.

Penn State-Iowa starts at 7 p.m. ET next Saturday. Peacock will stream the game exclusively.