Nittany Lions

Penn State's football team stands on the edge of a cliff. The 19th-ranked Nittany Lions (5-2) take on surprising, 17th-ranked Indiana (7-1) today at Beaver Stadium on Homecoming Day after two consecutive losses. Will they slip into a second consecutive season of mediocrity? And just how far will coach Joe Paterno go to prevent that from happening? That's about all the intrigue left for Penn State in its first Big Ten Conference season after its Rose Bowl hopes dissipated in back-to-back gloomy performances against Michigan and Ohio State.

There will be no national championship for Penn State this year unless Nebraska loses, Tennessee loses again, Michigan loses the Rose Bowl and people determine that's enough to vault the Nittany Lions past them all. But No. 1 Michigan crushed Penn State, 34-8, on Nov. 8, you say. No way the Nittany Lions ever should pass the Wolverines. But they could. These are the polls, and one never knows. When you lose is often the most important factor. Is it possible for a team to finish second in its conference and No. 1 in the country?

JOHN BUTLER, Penn State's new defensive backfield coach, has yet to coach a game for the Nittany Lions, but he helped make history by recruiting the first player of the Bill O'Brien era, in the process making something of a last-minute interception. Jordan Lucas, a native of New Rochelle, N.Y., who played this past season for Worcester Academy in Worcester, Mass., had been scheduled to enroll at Temple yesterday, but he held off when he heard Penn State, a school he had been interested in all along, was prepared to offer him a grant-in-aid.

BEAUTY IS IN the eye of the beholder, or so the old saying goes, but if there is anything to be gleaned from the first weekend of the 2010 college football season, it's that not all routs are created equal. Cases in point: Alabama's 48-3 dismantling of San Jose State vis a vis Penn State's late-developing, 44-14 victory over Youngstown State. To hear Alabama coach Nick Saban tell it, the defending national champion Crimson Tide's systematic destruction of the visiting Spartans was, in part, marred by unsightly warts, but the Nittany Lions' thumping of the Football Bowl Subdivision Penguins was a relative thing of beauty.

STATE COLLEGE - The end is starting to appear on the horizon for Penn State. Because of the bowl ban upon the Nittany Lions, they know that Saturday's game at No. 18 Nebraska will be their last road game of the season, and therefore the last road game of the seniors' careers. "It's a bittersweet thing, but we're taking it day-by-day, week-by-week, enjoying the moment," senior center Matt Stankiewitch said. "We only have three games left of wearing the Penn State blue and white and we're not in a bowl game, so we're going to take these last three games as great experiences.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - When Rodney Erickson came to congratulate the Penn State football team for an academic achievement on Monday, interim head coach Tom Bradley "schmoozed" the new Penn State president with the gift of a No. 1 Penn State jersey. "Maybe that would help my cause," Bradley said. "I gave [acting athletic director Dave Joyner] a No. 70 jersey, so I was trying to do the best I could do. " On Friday, Bradley interviewed with the search committee for Penn State's permanent head coaching position.

It certainly wasn't the kind of season he had envisioned for himself or his basketball team. Pitman's Jon Crispin had hoped for a third-straight state title and a shot at becoming South Jersey's all-time leading scorer. A recurring back injury put an end to Crispin's team and individual goals when he missed 10 games and was hampered in a handful of others. His back "feels great" now, thanks to 31/2 weeks of rest during the season and workouts with a personal trainer after.

In and out of Ross-Ade Stadium, a towering eyesore on the flat Indiana landscape, the wind came howling yesterday as noisily as a semi barreling down I-65. Passes sailed like Frisbees, dipped and darted like agitated bees, or stopped dead, well short of their targets. Wideouts frequently resembled knuckleball catchers as they wrestled with windswept throws. But while Purdue, with the nation's fourth-best passing attack, refused to make any weather-related concessions, Penn State embraced the gusty conditions, content to run the ball, control the clock, and compress its defense.

For the first time this season, Penn State's prolific Nittany Lions, the Blowout Bunch, chose a path of some resistance. Unlike Minnesota, Southern Cal and Iowa, Rutgers kept picking itself up off the ground to push back, actually testing Penn State's mettle, daring the Nittany Lions to keep coming at it. This new thing called competitive football was fun for a change. "We needed that; we needed some adversity," Penn State fullback Jon Witman said. "All year, we hadn't had a tough game.

Following the 41-10 season-ending beating Penn State took from Michigan State on Saturday, a thought came to mind while watching the bewildered, dispirited Nittany Lions file out of Spartan Stadium and stumble into an uncertain future: If Penn State is to regain its stature among college football's elite, it may take longer than coach Joe Paterno, who is nearing his 77th birthday, and the growing legions who would like to see him settle into...