Blue White Illustrated

P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> never celebrated wildly after a big win. Anyone who witnessed the aftermath of Penn State's victory over Ohio State last October couldn't have helped but notice that it didn't look much like the after- math of the Kent State or Temple wins. One might even say it looked like a Super Bowl victory celebration – which is ex- actly how it should have looked. The goal of the coaching staff may be to treat every week like Ohio State week, but it's only human nature to get a little more amped up for the most prominent opponents on the schedule. For Penn State, those oppo- nents are now Ohio State and Michigan. As the Nittany Lions work to get back to college football's top echelon, they are benchmarking themselves against the Buckeyes and Wolverines. There's no choice, really. Those are the teams that Penn State will have to beat with some regularity if it's going to make the turn from out-of-nowhere playoff hopeful to frequent championship contender. Will that turn happen? All three Big Ten East Division teams have undergone major coaching upheavals in recent years, so the past may not be much of a guide. But if only for the sake of histori- cal perspective, it does bear mentioning that since joining the Big Ten in 1993, Penn State is 7-14 against Michigan and 8-16 against Ohio State. Lloyd Carr was one of those coaches who, like Kirk Fer- entz and Bear Bryant, always seemed to have Joe Paterno's number, at one point winning nine in a row against the Lions. And the Buckeyes? They may have had some difficulties at Beaver Stadium over the years, including last year, but they've been dominant in Columbus. In a dozen appearances in Ohio Stadium as a Big Ten a member, Penn State has av- eraged 10.2 points per game. Not coin- cidently, it has gone 2-10 in those games. This year's Nittany Lions will be look- ing to reverse those trends when they hit a potentially season-defining eight-day stretch in which they must face both of the Big Ten's perennial powers. Michigan is up first, as the Wolverines are set to visit Beaver Stadium on Oct. 21. They've got a lot of new starters fol- lowing a wave of graduations that emp- tied out last year's two-deep, but everything else is the same, including their penchant for extreme gamesman- ship. A year ago, Michigan made head- lines by refusing to release its depth chart. Jim Harbaugh claimed that he didn't want to waste his staff's time. "I was trying to imagine how many people sat around and how many hours they worked on that," he said. It was an un- usual move, but the Wolverines topped themselves this past summer by refusing to make their roster public. A New Jersey news organization had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to force its release, which Harbaugh finally did in late August via Twitter. The benefits of The numbers might suggest that Saeed Blacknall is o$ to a slow start. He's been a dangerous player for you in the past. Do you feel like you need to get him more involved? It really doesn't work like that. We look at Saeed as a starter. We look at him as a big-time player. He's played a lot of football for us over the years. We've got great competition, which is excellent. But our o

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