Old Ironsides was the trophy awarded for the three-way college football rivalry between the Penn State Nittany Lions, the Pittsburgh Panthers, and the West Virginia Mountaineers. Although Old Ironsides is the most distinctive aspect of the rivalry, the trophy was long predated by the significance of the universities' collegiate football matches.

In 1984, staff from the Penn State Athletics Department informed their counterparts at Pittsburgh and West Virginia that the trophy went missing at some point while in Penn State's possession. The resulting searches yielded no trace and the Old Ironsides trophy was lost.

As a result of the reduced frequency of competitions between the schools and the disappearance of Old Ironsides, the triangular rivalry is largely viewed in the scope of the individual head-to-head rivalries and not a unified competition between all three.

The three schools were often referred to as the "Tri-State Big Three" or simply the "Big Three". This naming both predated and coexisted with the Old Ironsides trophy. Prior to and concurrent with the attached trophy, the winner of the triangular rivalry was named the "district Big Three champion".

In 1881, Pennsylvania State College played its first collegiate game against Lewisburg where they won 9–0. This was the first team fielded by any of the Big Three. The Western University of Pennsylvania (WUP) introduced football in 1890 and West Virginia University introduced football in 1891.

The first game played between any of the three was on November 6, 1893, when Penn State defeated WUP 32–0. The rivalry between the three schools rapidly formed as Pittsburgh, then WUP, regularly battled West Virginia and Penn State, who played an imbalanced series in Pittsburgh. Notably, Penn State versus West Virginia became an extremely heated rivalry as the two met in 1904, 1905, 1906, 1908, and 1909 in State College. WVU was shut out each time. They met again at Yankee Stadium in 1923. The result was a 13–13 tie.

In 1900, the first rivalry qualifying season took place as Western University played both Penn State and West Virginia. Western University lost both matchups, making the first result a split championship between Penn State and West Virginia.

In 1904, the first full round-robin took place, meaning each of the three teams played both of the others. West Virginia went 0–2 in the rivalry, Penn State went 1–1, and Western went 2–0 as part of their undefeated 1904 campaign. By 1908, the battle between the three was considered a championship and representative of supremacy in Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia and a 1921 article from The Pittsburg Press referred to a triangular rivalry between the schools as they competed for the "sectional title". By the 1930s, the trio was simply referred to as "the east's Big Three"