Payback Time? No. 1 Buckeyes
Open Big Ten With Penn State

By Paul Smith
paul.smith@collegeblitz.com

COLUMBUS -- It's not like the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes (3-0) need any extra incentive for Saturday's 3:30 p.m. ET Big Ten opener with young Penn State.

For one, the ESPN group some playful college football fans call "The Three Stooges" (DEFINITELY not in Columbus, by the way), anchor Chris Fowler, former O.S.U. quarterback Kirk Herbstreit, who co-hosts a talk show on WBNS/1460 "The Fan" locally, and the irrepressible former college coach of sorts, Lee Corso, is buildup enough.

For another, there is the little matter of the visit to Most Happy Valley last year, where Penn State's stout defense and the voices of nearly 110,000 screaming fans (save maybe 6,000 pulling for the visitors) proved enough to shut the door tightly on any Buckeye hopes for a run at the national title as the Nittany Lions won 17-10 en route to splitting the Big Ten championship with the Bucks.

Need one more? Well, it's a juicy rivalry that is rapidly becoming one of the league's best.

"They are physical," Buckeyes senior defensive tackle David Patterson, who has become a truly dominant player, says. "They come out and try to hit you. They also have great playmakers and great speed on offense...

Enough of the nicetires, though. The hint of the game face to come leaks into Patterson, without providing any bulletin board banter. "We'll be ready," he insisted. "We are getting focused. Coach (Jim) Tressel says that the season starts now -- which doesn't take anything away from our pre-season play.

"It's just that the Big Ten is the best conference in the nation. I might be biased because I play in that conferemce, but Big Ten teams are going to bring it. That is what you come to Ohio State for. There are big hits, good tackles and sound football."

All three should be in evidence. And on the Penn State side, after a nice bounceback 37-3 victory over I-AA Youngstown State, Tressel's former coaching address, there is this nagging statistic: 0-6 in Ohio Stadium since joining the Big Ten in 1993.

But Paterno barely gives that a sniff. Being as pedagogic and pragmatic as his 79 years would suggest, he harkens back to an earlier era, back when he took his Lions to the Big Horseshoe and remembers the great recruiting battles he had with Ohio State's patron saint, Wayne Woodrow Hayes.

"It has always been a pretty big game (for both teams)," Paterno says, responding to a reporter asking if the annual Big 33 prep battle between the best from Ohio and Pennsylvania stokes the rivalry. "I go back to '78 when we thought Art Schlichter was going to come to Penn State and we lost him at the last minute (to the Bucks) and we opened out there in Columbus.

"They won the Cotton Bowl the year before. We thought we were going to be pretty good and we had only lost one game in 1977. We had a thing going in the office because some of the guys on the staff thought they were going to start Schlichter, who was a true freshman. And I said, 'Woody Hayes will start a true freshman over his dead body.'

"When the game started, they started the kid (Rod Gerald) who had been the quarterback from Texas who had taken them to the Cotton Bowl and he started the game.

"I turned to the guys on the phone and said. 'You tell those guys upstairs that I know a little bit more about this than they do.' All of a sudden this roar went up. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Here comes Schlichter. Schlichter played the whole game and I never heard the end of it.

"We had a good football team. We had (All-American defensive tackle Matt) and (All-East defensive tackle Bruce) Clark and those guys and ended up beating them pretty good (19-0)."

The memories pour forth. And one stirring moment that took place four years ago when both teams were ranked in the top seven. Two years prior, Penn State defensive back Adam Taliaferro slammed into tailback Derrick Combs and snapped his vertebrae. For several months he was paralyzed, but his grim individual battle, first at University Hospital in Columbus, then in Philadelphia's hugely-recognized Jefferson Medical Center, was one of the great studies in courage.

As a thunderous, fascinated crowd of over 105,000 watched, a young man wearing a white Penn State road jersey #43 stood in the southwest corner of the Big Horseshoe, a few yards from the Penn State locker room.

The introduction was one for the ages: "Two years ago, they said this young man would never walk again. Well, Adam Taliaferro didn't agree with that prediction. He had a gameplan of his own and battled through therapy in hospitals in Columbus, Philadelphia and New Jersey and here he is today. Let's have a good, warm Ohio Stadium greeting for #43, one of the bravest Nittany Lions of them all, Adam Taliaferro..."

The crowd roared for fully a minute and a half and Taliaferro -- and a not-inconsiderable number of fans daubed their eyes as tears flowed freely.

The games have their own peculiar charms, of course. For Tressel, he knows the Bucks need to maintain an intense week-by-week focus and pretty much put Penn State's 41-17 nadir at Notre Dame two weekends back in File 13.

"Penn State, you've all watched Penn State for a long time," Tressel says of the 2-1 Nitts. "It starts with them being physical. Probably the next thing you think of when you think of Penn State is they're so well-schooled that everybody on the field whether it's an offensive play, a defensive scheme, or a special units play, everyone on their field knows exactly why they're doing what they're doing and they know the technique that's necessary."

Tressel also knows the old knock about Big Ten teams being hugely physical but a step slow. But like most other league coaches, he ain't buyin'. "...I think what they've added in the last couple of years is tremendous speed."

Tony Hunt, a powerful 225-pound thunderball, breaks the occasional big run. Anthony Morelli replaces a quarterbacking legend, Michael Robinson, at quarterback, and the hope around University Park is the young offensive line can jell fast enough to keep the Lions' skill people in one piece.

But against Ohio State, which has dealt with the daunting task of replacing nine of 11 defensive starters, this game may be won or lost by the play of Penn State's defense.

Stopping Troy Smith, who may have stepped past Notre Dame's strugglling Brady Quinn, in the Heisman Trophy race, will have occupied a whole lot of office time this week. Well, at least slowing him down!

"People say you have to put pressure on him and you have to do this and that," Paterno says. "Yeah, sure. Try to catch him. You put pressure on him and you are running around trying to make sure (All-American wide receiver Ted) Ginn, (Anthony) Gonzalez and the other kid (Roy Hall) aren't running wild on you. And then they go into that backfield set of theirs where I take the kid from Akron (St. Vincent/St. Mary High School, Chris Wells), who is a true freshman and put him outside.

"You plug away and plug away. I think our defensive line is working at it. We are going to have to play a lot of people, because they are going to get tired."

The Bucks know Penn State is nowhere near as bad as it showed at Notre Dame. But therein may lie the problem for Paterno's staff and the players both. As Tressel's .800-plus Division I-A won-lost record (53-13) would suggest, they rarely have anything but a complete dossier on their upcoming opponents.

"Penn State puts a lot of pressure on offenses with their front four," says Troy Smith, who played with Ted Ginn, Jr. at Cleveland's Glenville High School. "And they spread the field on the corners. They are a good team because they are the same team as last year. Penn State has the same defensive coordinator as last year (Tom Bradley), but I think we're going to see a lot of different loooks from the defense this year."

Perhaps one of the more enjoyable aspects of the Penn State/Ohio State rivalry is the genuine respect and affection both coaching staffs and most players have for each other.

"I knew Jim's dad (Lee Tressel, who coached at Baldwin-Wallace, Jim's alma mater)," Paterno says. "I was coach-of-the-year for my division (I-A) and he was coach of the year for his division (III) when he was at Baldwin-Wallace.

"I think I am right on this. In those days (1970s) you had to go around to some coach-of-the-year clinics. Lee used to wear a bow tie and was a real sharp guy, an awfully nice guy. In fact, Jim just lost his mother about six months ago.

"I think Jim was about 12 or 13 when he came on one of the trips with his dad. My mind might be playing tricks with me. When Jimmy was at Youngstwon, he and I talked a lot. In fact, I debated trying to get him to come (to Penn State) as an assistant coach.

"He was extremely well organized, a fine young man and a, I think, good motivator in his own way."

Tressel treasures the relationship this way. "It's so natural from a rivalry
standpoint," he says. "...We've had some great games. I think it's so natural because we're contiguous. Rusty (Miller, The Associated Press's Central Ohio correspondent), do you want me to spell that for you?"

He has no trouble spelling out his affection for Paterno with emphasis.

"I think anytime that you have one of the legendary people in the game...it adds something to it," says Tressel, who is in his sixth season in Columbus. "I was looking at some of the, I think Joe's played against us, I don't know, almost 20 times. That's incredible.

"And his history, and his knowledge and his expectations for his players, his ability to see because of his vast experience of what they need to do to get better, Joe Paterno is one of the great ones and he does make the game even -- if you can make it even tougher than it is, he makes it tougher."

As always, Ohio State/Penn State will be one part "slobberknocker," one part chess match, another part cat-and-mouse and a final part raw emotion.

It represents a huge chance for the Nitts to reassert themselves on the national stage, to erase much of the memory of the Notre Dame debacle. But it represents a big chance for the Bucks to exact a little payback from last year.

That may, in the end, prove decisive.