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seems to be improving, but still makes the questionable kick all too often, and usually when you really do not need it to happen. I think the team can go 4-2 or 5- 1 the rest of the season, but as much as I want to think we beat Ohio State, Nebraska and Wiscon- sin, I think there will be a special teams gaffe that loses one of those games. An 8-4 year is still very, very good for this team, and 9-3 would be awesome! Offense: C- I expected more, es- pecially with our offensive line and tight ends being so improved. What really hurts is that we have had ball control because our D has kept the ball out of opponents' hands. What is nice is that we are scoring touchdowns, but we should be scoring at least two more per game in my opinion. The O looks good, but past teams pro- duced better results. Defense: A- We made terrible ad- justments against Ohio, but other than that we have been A+. We are causing turnovers and getting a lot of three-and-outs. Special teams: D+ Sam Ficken has made some nice kickoffs, and Butterworth is very good at pooch punting. Several kicks inside the 20 and even the 10. Devon42 Offense: A You lose that much talent with both graduation and defections, and you've scored 35 and 39 points in your first two Big Ten games? Think about it: We've lost Justin Brown and Silas Redd, and we're starting four new offen- sive linemen. Add to that the off- season losses of Devon Smith and Curtis Drake. I can't imagine any- one with half a brain expecting this offense to move the ball the way they have. Defense: B+ Aside from the sec- ond half meltdown against Ohio, these guys have been playing tremendous football. Special Teams: D Kickoff cover- age team is the only reason this unit doesn't get an F. NOLADan Playing the long game PSUJim85 t a recent panel discussion about the future of the NCAA, Gene Cor- rigan, a former president of college athletics' governing body, introduced himself to the decidedly pro-Penn State crowd by recounting a visit he made to University Park in 1985 when he was serving as Notre Dame's athletic director. It was the next-to-last week of the football season, and the Irish, limping to the end of the Gerry Faust era, were hoping the dreary pall that had been hanging over their program would lift long enough for them to pull off a season-making upset of the No. 1 Nittany Lions. Didn't happen. Boy, did it not hap- A pen. "I'll never forget it," Corrigan said. "Rained like hell. Cold. Miserable. You suckers won, too, which made it even worse." The final score was 36-6, and the big victory kept Penn State on top of the polls and on track for a shot at the national championship. I remem- ber the game myself. If you were one of the 84,000 who sat through the deluge, you probably remember it, too. There are few things in Penn State lore more satisfying than dou- ble-digit victories over Notre Dame, and even if he had stopped there, Corrigan would have gladdened the hearts of many in the crowd at the State Theatre in downtown State Col- lege. But he didn't stop there. "I'm a Penn State lover," he contin- ued. "I was gone from Notre Dame by the time you joined the Big Ten, and I hated that we weren't going to be playing anymore. I thought this was the kind of school that Notre Dame loved to compete against. "You all have been through some- JUDGMENT CALL thing that is so unique. And I hope it never happens to anybody else again. My heart goes out to you on this thing, and I've been a little bit critical of the NCAA in this. What you had to go through was really hard [but] you took action immediately. … You did literally everything I thought you should do, with the ex- ception of trying to do something to take care of those young people. And I'm sure you would have done that. So I was upset for you. You got hit over the head awfully hard." The idea that the university has been unfairly maligned in recent months has been a tough sell outside of the 814 area code, and the crowd that night seemed gratified to hear one of college sports' most distin- guished executives express misgiv- ings about the NCAA's handling of the Penn State case. But sympathy was about all Penn State got from the panel. If you came to the event hoping to hear Corrigan or former NCAA executive director Cedric Dempsey lay out a strategy for easing the sanctions, you left disap- pointed. Said Dempsey, "I don't know that you've got a lot to fight with." So let's go ahead and assume that Penn State is not going to force the NCAA to revisit its decisions or get it to take back the overly broad denun- ciation of the school's "culture." Let's also assume that Bill O'Brien is going to have to make the best of a bad sit- uation for a while. Because, like it or not, that's the reality that Penn State is facing. Except for a few rogue trustees, we haven't heard any prominent Penn State executives complain publicly about how hard

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