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P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> here may come a day when James Franklin will regret describing Pitt as just another team on Penn State's schedule, as he did fol- lowing the Nittany Lions' victory over the Panthers a few weeks ago. That day could arrive as soon as next September, when his team will return to Heinz Field without the guy who scored the first two touchdowns in their 33-14 win earlier this month and, in all likelihood, without the guy who scored their last two touchdowns, too. But the potential for some future comeuppance clearly wasn't on Franklin's mind in the media room after the game. "I know last year, when [Pitt] won, it was like the Super Bowl," he said, recalling the Panthers' 42-39 victory in the resumption of the long-dormant intrastate rivalry in 2016. "But for us, this was like beating Akron." Shots fired. Or, maybe not. Asked to elaborate, Franklin didn't exactly walk anything back, but he did put a benign spin on his comment, insisting that it simply re- flected the Lions' one-game-at-a-time philosophy. "I'm going to enjoy this win for about seven hours," he said, "and then Sunday we're going to wake up and start preparing for the next team and I'm going to say the same thing: that that team is the most important and that game is the most important game on our schedule." OK, fair enough. But Franklin is a student of psy- chology in the most literal sense of the word – it was his major at East Stroudsburg – so he couldn't have been unaware that in describing the matchup with the Panthers as just another game, he was hitting them where it hurt. Of all the things that Pitt hates about Penn State – and it's a long list – the most irk- some is probably that the feeling isn't en- tirely mutual, that the hate is unrequited. To Pitt, Penn State has long been an ob- ject of fascination and disdain. To Penn State, Pitt has long been just another one of those pesky Eastern teams to be dispatched on the way to bigger and better things, and Big Ten membership has only in- creased the ambivalence as the series has dwindled to a handful of early- season games every couple of decades. Even last year, a year in which Pitt got everything it wanted out of its matchup with Penn State, it was the Nittany Lions who got to celebrate a conference champi- onship and play in the Rose Bowl, while Pitt had to settle for a spot in the Pinstripe Bowl. But for all the talk about treat- ing every opponent the same, it isn't as if the Nittany Lions have ENEMIES OF THE STATE T The goal may be to treat every opponent the same, but are some rivals more equal than others?

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