"He's a second-string quarterback," a restrained Coach Joe Paterno said early Sunday morning, defining B. Michael Robinson, the 6-foot-3-inch, 228-pound redshirt freshman surprise from Richmond, Va., who shocked and shucked the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Bob Griese, analyzing the performance high above the electric crowd of 110,753 in the humid ABC Sports booth at Beaver Stadium, shouted during the third quarter: "That's it! That's it! That's it!. No more quarterback. This kid is 6-3, 230. He's not playing quarterback."

"He's got your number," play-by-play man Brad Nessler reminded No. 12.

"He's got my number on!" Griese agreed. "This kid is not playing quarterback."

Lynn Swann, reporting from near the Penn State bench, interrupted: "If Penn State runs the option, he's ideal."

"You're right Swannie," Griese said.

B. Michael Robinson, born Feb. 6, 1983 and an all-American candidate for academics with a 3.32 average through the spring semester, was not playing quarterback. He was a wingback. He was a fullback. He was a receiver. He was a running back. He was the difference.

"And here's to you Mr. Robinson," Nessler said of Robinson, who scored two touchdowns, one a 28-yard run, and averaged 14 yards a carry, on 4 carries for 56 yards.

"He's a quarterback or he's a running back or he's the slash back, whatever you want to call him," Swann said. "Slash Back."

Maybe a Throw Back. Or a Come Back.

By unveiling his surprise for Frank Solich's Nebraska team, Paterno returned to a coaching philosophy he used in the 60's: Don't tell anyone publicly before the game what you are going to do and then do it. Don't even give a hint, or a smile, or a wink.

"Michael can do a lot of things," Paterno told the gathered media after the game. "He is an awfully strong runner and has got a lot of speed. We try to get him into the game and I'd like to get him in at quarterback more but Zack Mills was doing so well."

And in typical humble Paterno fashion, he added: "I'm not the smartest guy in the world. But I'm smart enough to know that when you have a guy as gifted as Michael Robinson, you get him in the game."

Paterno was also smart enough to let the game plan patently unfold under the direction of Fran Ganter, the assistant head coach and offensive coordinator, who worked the a perfectionist professional while coping with the deaths of his 53-year-old wife and her mother during the summer.

Paterno let his coaching staff alone during the first half. He let it micromanage the game. He instead paced back and forth on the sideline during breaks in the action and occasionally would turn his head like an eavesdropper to where the assistant coached huddled with players. He was the CEO at arm's lenghth, wearing a windbreaker over a white shirt and tie, and his management worked to near perfection.

But he was the disciplinarian for a national television audience. When defensive back Rich Gardner became too enthusiastic after a play, Paterno went on the field and motioned him over and then got in his face on the sideline. Gardner still did not get the message and with a left clinched fist pumped enthusiastically again. He didn't think Paterno would see that gesture, but Joe did through the Pepsi bottle lenses and jolted back to Gardner, grabbed him under the left shoulder pad and restated that he did not want any showboating. Paterno had already had one player ejected and he did not want to lose Gardner, a junior from Chicago, whose 42-yard interception return was the backbreaker for Nebraska, helping Penn State to a 26-7 lead.

	Paterno defines swagger: Can you define swagger for me? Give me the definition of swagger. It is obnoxious and overconfident. There is another definition, which is an adjective, which says poised, confident. Now if the swagger that they are talking about is having poise and having confidence and not be loud-mouthed and obnoxious and overconfident, I hope we have that back. I don’t think one win gives you any right to swagger... Until you really go through a lot of different situations, I don’t know how you go around swaggering. I want us to be confident, poised and understand that we can overcome different things if we hang together. If that means you have a swagger, that is a good definition of swagger.

"I think it's good for everyone to show that much swagger," Gardner said afterward. "But it's not good for Coach, so it's not good for anyone."

If the swagger is back, is Penn State back?

Jimmy Kennedy, the fifth-year senior, thought so. "It's a different team," he said. "It's a different confidence here. The swagger is back. Penn State is back."

The Nebraska game was one of redemption for Kennedy, who admitted he was stung by the criticism from a Central Florida assistant coach who said Kennedy was not a factor in that game. Kennedy became a factor against Nebraska by chasing after quarterback Jammal Lord, who was born in Brooklyn a block and 55 years later from where Paterno was born, and forcing him to make some bad decisions. Kennedy had two solo tackles and assisted on two tackles as Penn State limited Nebraska to 328 yards, its lowest total since 1996.

Zack Mills put the swagger in the way he ran the offense with perfection. The redshirt sophomore completed 19 of 31 passes for 259 yards and confused the Nebraska defense with play-action passes, reverses, shotgun formations and daring split-second pitches on options. The perimeter and secondary were Mills's to exploit with ease.

Larry Johnson put the swagger in his running from tailback. The State College, Pa., native, whose family once had Solich over for dinner during the high school recruiting period, ran hard for 123 yards and 2 touchdowns on 19 carries and caught 4 passes for 35 yards. He wanted to be a tailback and Paterno got him instead of Solich.

"We were frustrated and we wanted to prove that Penn State was back," Johnson said.

David Kimball put the swagger into his punts that carried pout of the end zone and kept Nebraska pinned in its end for most of the game.

Swagger? "I don't want to get carried away after one win," Paterno said. "I just think Nebraska just had one of those nights."

Before the game, Paterno diminished the importance by saying: "It's not the Crusades or the war on terrorism. It's a game."

At halftime one official said it was the hardest-hitting game he had seen this season.

Misdirection even confused Nebraska off the field. Nebraska wanted 100 rooms in State College but waited until July to confirm them. Instead Nebraska wound up in Altoona, 45 miles south. Its flight to State College was delayed four hours by a mechanical problem, and when Nebraska arrived at 11 p.m., it canceled its walkthrough at Beaver Stadium and went by buses to Altoona.

A police escort brought Nebraska to the stadium by 5:30. Randy Press, a Penn State publicist, joined the motorcade and zipped to the stadium in eight minutes from the Toftrees section of State College.

After the game, the bus marked No. 1 could not get out of the stadium garage near the Nebraska lockerroom because a metal barrel loaded with trash blocked it. Solich and an assistant got off the bus and moved the obstacle out of the way.

There was more misdirection. The charter flight taking Nebraska back to Lincoln arrived two hours late and the team did not get home until 5 A.M. Sunday.

Yet at halftime, Solich was upbeat.

"We've just got to play some solid base defense," he said. "We're out of position and not making adjustments. We just got to slow them down some. A touchdown and an extra point and we will be right back in this thing."

He must have been dazed by travel fatigue, or by Mr. Mills, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Ganter, Mr. Paterno, or Mr. Robinson.