Blue White Illustrated

21 in four seasons at Stanford before heading to the pros, has already changed the perception of a program that had in- explicably >oundered under Rich Ro- driguez and Brady Hoke. The Wolverines are listed as 100-1 favorites to win the national title, which doesn't sound like much of an endorsement until you con- sider where they stood prior to Har- baugh's arrival in Ann Arbor. As Super- Book's head football oddsmaker told ESPN.com, "I would have had them at 300-1 if he weren't there." The question – and it's an important one for Penn State – is whether the Big Ten's rising tide li@s all boats. Histori- cally, that hasn't happened a whole lot. For decades, Michigan and Ohio State dominated the conference, appearing in 20 Rose Bowls between them from 1969 to 1993. And while it's true that those dynasties were built in an era when a small number of elite schools were able to stockpile recruits and hoard the handful of Saturday a@ernoon TV slots that the networks devoted to college football, the game's power structure hasn't been totally overturned in the decades since Woody and Bo departed. College football remains the least egal- itarian of our major spectator sports. It doesn't have a dra@ or a salary cap to re- duce the talent disparities between good and bad teams. It doesn't have a 64- team tournament that gives dozens of eager hopefuls a shot at postseason glo- ry. It requires 22 starters, not =ve, so the impact of a single player or even a hand- ful of players is less pronounced than in basketball. It's a rich-get-richer world in which the schools with the resources and the willingness to splurge on facili- ties, recruiting junkets and coaching salaries are going to fare the best year in and year out. Usually, the schools that have those resources are the ones that fared the best in previous years – the top-tier programs from the Power Five conferences. The good news for Penn State is that it's one of those schools. The Nittany Li- ons have a fan base that will pack the stands for a cold-weather bowl game between two unranked teams. They've got a coach who's been known to recruit by helicopter. They've got a 107,000- seat stadium that they've been getting better at =lling and a football facility that is slated to receive a $12 million high-tech makeover. Whatever prob- lems the Lions are facing right now, a dearth of resources isn't one of them. The bad news is that while the Nit- tany Lions may not be under NCAA sanction anymore, they are continuing to grapple with the fallout from two years of scholarship reductions. Yes, they are looking optimistically to a time when they will be able to compete on a level playing field. But that time will not arrive promptly on Sept. 5. A little patience will be required. Maybe more than a little. While the Nittany Lions appear to be getting bet- ter, as evidenced by their gutsy 31-30 overtime win over Boston College in the Pinstripe Bowl, as well as their recent recruiting e?orts, their opponents are getting better, too. Ohio State has most of this year's national championship team returning. Michigan made the splashiest coaching hire of the o?-sea- son. Michigan State is coming o? a thrilling 42-41 victory over Baylor and is welcoming back quarterback Connor Cook and defensive end Shilique Cal- houn, both of whom passed up the NFL in order to take care of what Cook called "un=nished business." All of those teams compete in the Big Ten's East Division, which is starting to look like the meat grinder everyone pre- dicted it would be. Consider, for exam- ple, that the seven East Division teams amassed a collective 56-35 record in 2014 and went 5-2 in the postseason. And that was with two of its most sto- ried programs on the skids. If Penn State and Michigan come roaring back, this division could rival the SEC West as the country's toughest. That said, even if Penn State and Michigan do come roaring back, com- peting against the Buckeyes is going to be brutal as long as Meyer is their coach. Most years, possibly every year, he is go- ing to have more talent at his disposal than everyone else in the league. What's more, he is going to use that talent ruth- lessly. Oregon found that out when Ohio State, already leading by 15 points, es- chewed the victory formation with 28 seconds le@ and gave the ball to Ezekiel Elliott for one last touchdown run. Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State and the rest of the East Division know what they are up against. It won't be easy for any of them, not at home and certainly not in Columbus. The Nittany Lions will have to take their game to a level it hasn't been at since the early 1990s. But they want to be a team that matters in a conference that matters. This is how you do it. ■

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