STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- With just one minute separating them at birth, twins Blake and Tyler Gillikin were friends and friendly competitors from the start.
"When you have twins who do the exact same things academically and athletically you're going to have competition," Tyler said Monday afternoon in a phone interview, adding that Blake has held that one minute edge over him forever. "I think that's what made us both better. You had that person right next to you who maybe you weren't in the same classes with him, but you come home and he's got a 94 on a test and I got a 93. He got me this time, I'll get him next time. Every single thing that we did throughout our first 18 years was competitive."
Saturday afternoon when the No. 4 Nittany Lions play Northwestern in Evanston, Ill., the brothers will be on opposite sidelines for the first time in their careers. Blake, the Nittany Lions' punter, grew up with brother Tyler, now the Wildcats' long snapper, serving as his long snapper. They played soccer and football together and went back and forth in the classroom too where both still aspire to be orthopedic surgeons -- a career choice they credit to spending a lot of time visiting specialists for their sports injuries, with Blake holding the edge in the number of broken bones, Tyler said.
This week's game is one they both had circled since their recruitments, a time when Blake already verbally committed to Penn State, watched the Lions lose to the Wildcats in the family's basement of their Georgia home while Tyler, then a preferred walk-on pledge at Northwestern, watched on a separate TV upstairs. Tyler held the Wildcats' 23-21 victory over Blake's head for the last two years as the two have shared plenty of trash talk about this game since then.
"That game in October is a really big deal to my family," Blake said earlier this season. "It's going to be a really special week for me and him to see each other on the same field."
The boys' parents and grandparents, the latter whom bought an RV so they could take turns watching their grandsons play, will all be making the trip to Evanston. Usually they split up so there's someone in the stands at each game. They'll do so with the RV decked out with half featuring Penn State coasters and flags and the other half full of Northwestern coasters and flags. The parents will sport special split jerseys, one half featuring blue and white and the other half covered in purple.
They likely won't be the only ones with split jerseys either. Reserve quarterback Bill Fessler, the Lions' holder, has a brother, Charlie, who is a redshirt sophomore wide receiver for the Wildcats.
"My family is great about splitting everything pretty much equally so everyone feels like they're cared for as much as the other," Tyler said. "They really didn't love Penn State or Northwestern before either one of us went there."
Now, with Tyler in his first season as the Wildcats' long snapper and Blake continuing to be an X-factor for the Lions' special teams, the brothers hustle back to their dorm rooms if their games don't overlap in hopes of watching each other. They text back and forth during the week and even last season as the Lions went on their run to the Rose Bowl. Tyler recalled watching on TV as Blake made his first career tackle in the game, a play that took both of them back to their middle school days when Blake was a cornerback because, at the time, he thought punting "can be boring sometimes."
"He was always really, really supportive of me," Blake said of Tyler. "He didn't have all the recruiting attention that I got. And I think, looking back on it, I didn't really give him enough credit for how he handled that. Obviously I think long snappers are kind of the forgotten position when it comes to recruiting because you even see punters and kickers being recruited more. ... I would really give him credit for how he handled that process, and I think he always had a plan, too. He wanted to go to Northwestern regardless of whether it was for football or just to be a regular student. He's a really bright kid."
They both are. Blake is a member of Penn State's Schreyer Honors College where he's studying kinesiology and Tyler is a biology major who, just like his brother, wants to attend medical school down the road. Surely at some point that'll turn into a friendly competition too.
"I'm super proud of what he's doing right now," Blake said. "I'm looking forward to playing against him. I think it's the first time I've ever played against him in an organized sport. So that'll be fun."