Saturday, his team and a few others were a little out of whack on a whacky week two for college football.

This week’s whacky top-10 list:

• Boston College was a 10-point underdog when it came to Unhappy Valley, Pa., after it blew a big lead in an upset loss to Wake Forest. The Eagles left with a 27-14 upset of Penn State and agita for its septuagenarian coach, Joe Paterno.

• Washington State was regrouping after losing Mike Price to a date with Destiny, as Jere Longman of The New York Times described Mike Price’s indiscreet behavior at Alabama. Yet the Cougars built a 19-0 lead at Notre Dame before falling in overtime, 29-26.

• Auburn, picked to finish No. 1 by The New York Times, is now averaging 1.5 points per game after losing for the second straight week. This time the loss came to Georgia Tech, 17-3. Last week, Southern California stunned the Tigers, 23-0.

• Miami was peeled like an orange inside its Orange Bowl by the Florida Crocodiles (a nickname that came after the Gators public relations staff mistakenly placed a croc on the media guide cover), who at one point scored 30 unanswered points and made the Hurricanes play like a weak Big East/Atlantic Coast Conference team instead of a national title contender. But Miami rallied for 28 consecutive points and a 38-33 victory.

• Virginia had no back-up quarterback to replace injured Matt Schaub and fell to South Carolina, 31-7.

• Wake Forest, which might be the most underrated team in the country, stunned North Carolina State, 38-24, for its second consecutive upset.

• Ohio State punished tailback Maurice Clarett for lying and nearly was dethroned as national champion in its second game of the season before escaping 32-point underdog San Diego State, 16-13.

• Bowling Green, like Boston College, asserted its superiority over a Big Ten team by edging Purdue, 27-26.

• Syracuse put up basketball-like numbers in a Big East-A.C.C. shootout and outlasted North Carolina in three overtimes, 49-47.

• And, in another overtime affair, Villanova and Temple, which earlier agreed to play a 12:01 A.M. Midnight Madness basketball game, played a game decided in two overtimes by a three-pointer, 23-20.

And in other whacky games, Tennessee held off Marshall, 31-24; Fresno State upset Oregon State, 16-14; Air Force surprised Northwestern (and the third hit of the day for the Big Ten), 22-21; and Colorado upset U.C.L.A., 16-14.

A lot of things were out of whack on this day.

But the biggest out-of-whack performance came in Unhappy Valley. Before the first quarter was half over, with 7 minutes 30 seconds to play, Boston College had a 21-0 lead. The fans backed up by an accident on Interstate 99 still were not in their seats.

"They were sharp. We went out flat early and we just couldn’t recover. . . . They’re hot, we can’t make a first down. We drop the ball and kick it to them. They’re hot and I look up there and it’s 14-0."

That was the analysis of the septuagenarian coach, Joe Paterno, now 76.

The Outback Steakhouse blimp, Bloomin' Onion 1, was overhead. The 1973 team featuring Penn State’s only Heisman Trophy winner, John Cappelletti, and a 12-0 record was there.

But the young offensive line was not there and Penn State could not answer the Boston College onslaught (10 first downs in the first quarter alone).

And when Penn State tried to come back in the second half, two fumbles were lost, 16 and 3 yards from the Boston College end zone.

“We had trouble with their ends,” Paterno said. “Our two tackles had troubles with pass protection.”

The troubles of various varieties have continued over the last three season. Since Minnesota ended a 9-0 start in 1999, Penn State is playing only .500 football with a 21-21 record (a 1-3 finish in 1999, 5-7 in 2000, 5-6 in 2001 and 9-4 last year.)

One sign of the overall Penn State nonchalance was shown by its last all-American quarterback, Kerry Collins, in an interview with Mike and the Mad Dog on WFAN, the New York sports radio station.

“Who do they play?” Collins asked about the Nittany Lions on the eve of their Boston College game.

Next for the Nittany Lions is Nebraska, at Lincoln, in primetime on ABC, next Saturday night. It will not be a 41-7 Penn State win, as it was a year ago.

Temple played for the first time at the new Lincoln Financial Field in its home opener and stumbled to 0-2, but Steve Joachim, the Temple radio analyst, had a good day. Joachim played quarterback for Paterno before transferring to Temple to play for Wayne Hardin, who had coached Navy’s two Heisman winners, Joe Bellino and Roger Staubach. Darrell Royal, the former Texas coach, christened Joachim “Stevie Jo Achim” during a Cotton Bowl press conference in 1972.

On Saturday, Joachim won the radio crew’s prize for correctly predicting Temple’s crowd would be 30,000.

Another analyst, Billy Joe Smith of Fox Sports Net, drawled the name of Notre Dame as “Neuter Dame,” which was appropriate, though whacky, at the time when the Fighting Irish were trailing big.

Oh, yes, one other whacky memory from 30 years ago. At the same press conference in 1972, Darrell Royal also remarked as Paterno poor-mouthed his Penn State team, which had future Hall-of-Famers Lydell Mitchell and Franco Harris in the backfield, “Joe, you’re peeing on my leg.”

The halftime score was 7-6. “It’s like an N.F.L. game,” former Penn State media maven Jim Tarman quipped. By the end it was 30-6, Penn State, which on that day was not out of whack.