What time, channel, will Penn State-USC be on Oct. 12?

Penn State will compete in another top-25 matchup on Oct. 12 when it heads to Los Angeles for a Big Ten contest for the first time since the conference expanded ahead of the 2024 season. The Nittany Lions hit the road for just the second time this season then when they visit USC inside of the famed LA Memorial Coliseum. We’ve known that for quite some time. Now, though, we know when the game will start.

CBS will televise the matchup. It will start at 3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT. The broadcast crew will likely be the network’s top one. It features Brad Nessler (play-by-play), Gary Danielson (color commentary), and Jenny Dell (sideline reporter).

Penn State typically travels for road games on Friday if they are playing on Saturday, Thursday if they are playing on Friday, and so on. However, because of the length of this trip and the time zone difference, the team will leave earlier than that. They will travel west on Thursday. And, it will fly to California out of Harrisburg instead of State College.

“We spent a ton of time talking to NFL organizations as well as college programs that have done East Coast to West Coast travel during the season and what are the best practices for that,” Lions coach James Franklin said at Big Ten Media Days in July. “So [we] put a lot of time into that, and we’re excited about those opportunities.”

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This will be the 11th meeting between the two schools. USC has won the last three contests. The most recent one came in 2017, which the Trojans won an instant classic 52-49 at the Rose Bowl. Before that, the programs had not met since 2009 and have only played three times since 2000. Head coach Lincoln Riley’s team just blasted Wisconsin 38-21 and now travels to Minnesota this week before hosting Penn State.

“We knew we could compete,” Riley told reporters last weekend. “There was never a day I said, ‘Oh God, I hope we can compete in this conference.’ We knew we could compete, now you gotta go win, you gotta go play well. After the way that last week finished, to come back, we had a lot of new guys in new positions all over the place.

“A lot of guys really stepped up on this football team. To have the first half go the way it did, and to come back and play that well just says a lot about the character of the guys in this room. They’re going to battle and we’re not going anywhere. We don’t panic. And that’s a good quality half, because when you play the schedule that we play, you’re going to have some ups and downs, and you’ve got to be incredibly resilient. So far we have been.”

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