The 2007 Valero Alamo Bowl was a college football bowl game played on December 29, 2007 in the 65,000-seat Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, and nationally televised by ESPN. The game was one of the 2007–08 NCAA football bowl games that concluded the 2007 NCAA Division I FBS football season. It was the 15th Alamo Bowl and the first Alamo Bowl sponsored by the Valero Energy Corporation. The game featured the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Texas A&M Aggies, who were both unranked in the national polls. The two teams had met once in the Alamo Bowl in 1999, when Penn State shutout Texas A&M 24–0. The Aggies were coached by interim head coach Gary Darnell, who had taken over after Dennis Franchione resigned, and the Nittany Lions were coached by Hall of Famer Joe Paterno, who marked the 2007 Alamo Bowl as the 500th game of his head coaching career. Leading into the game This was the Aggies' 30th bowl appearance, and their third in the Alamo Bowl. In their first Alamo Bowl game in 1995, the 19th-ranked Aggies defeated the 14th-ranked Michigan Wolverines 22–20. In their second appearance in 1999, 13th-ranked Penn State defeated the 18th-ranked Aggies 24–0. Both the 1995 and 1999 games are two of the five in Alamo Bowl history that attracted sellout crowds, with the 1999 game having the second largest crowd. One day after Texas A&M head coach Dennis Franchione resigned after the Aggies' last regular season matchup against the Texas Longhorns on November 23, 2007, A&M athletic director Bill Byrne announced defensive coordinator Gary Darnell would coach the Aggies' bowl game as the interim head coach. Two days later, Byrne hired Houston Texans offensive coordinator and former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike Sherman. Texas A&M officially accepted the invitation to play in the Alamo Bowl on December 2, 2007 against the Penn State Nittany Lions, who accepted their invitation two days earlier on November 30. This was the Nittany Lions' 40th bowl appearance, and their second in the Alamo Bowl. The 2007 Nittany Lions, who finished 8–4 in their regular season, are led by 42nd-year head coach Joe Paterno, a 2007 College Football Hall of Fame inductee. With a 22–10–1 bowl game record, Paterno is the all-time winningest leader in bowl victories and appearances. He also holds the record for the most undefeated FBS seasons than any other coach in