But first, this word from Notre Dame.

OUCH!

Raise your hands if you were among those culling the FIghting Irish schedule for wins and losses and scrawled an 'L' before Brigham Young.

Didn't think so. Other than a few devout Mormon Tabernacle goers and diehards on B.Y.U.'s Provo campus, you would have had to conduct a major league search to find any Cougar backers.

But when most of the rest of the college football community east of the Rockies was deep asleep, the Irish opened 2004 with a major misstep, a 20-17 loss to unheralded B.Y.U.

So Brady Quinn, wha happen out there in big sky country?

"We're not making plays, not converting on third down, things like that," the sophomore Irish quarterback from Dublin (Ohio) Coffman High School told the Chicago Sun-Times' John Jackson.

"That's what it comes down to. It's that simple. We've got to tighten some things up. We've got a lot of work heading into Michigan."

That dull sound you may hear in the background is Notre Dame alumni, real and subway, sharpening their verbal knives as they witness the opening of Year Three of the Tyrone Willingham era.

With starting tailback Ryan Grant held out because of a stubborn, slowly healing hamstring injury, the Irish running game was bupkes.

And Quinn's offensive line was a study in first-game jitters. "I don't think I could place our inability to run the football on the absence of Ryan," Willingham said to Jackson.

"Probably more than anything else, their defensive scheme kept us a little bit on our heels where we could not really come off the ball in both our running game and our passing game."

It wasn't until the Irish fell behind 20-3 and had repeatedly fallen victim to former Bears defensive coordinator Gary Crowton's defensive schemes.

"It was more a matter of not getting a good push up front," said Irish defensive coordinator Bill Diedrick to Jackson. "If you're not moving people, you're not going to have anywhere to run."

Ryan McKnight's 54-yard touchdown reception and cornerback Preston Jackson's 38-yard T.D. interception return got the Irish close, but Notre Dame, which wanted to shift the B.Y.U. game to the week before its original opener against Michigan, never saw this coming.

Meanwhile, Penn State's Zack Mills, who struggled through the Nittany Lions' sluggish 3-9 season last year, staged an impressive revival as the Nitts knocked off a not-that-bad Akron team 48-10. He completed 16-of-23 passes and, unlike last year, those that fell incomplete were not a result of receivers' errors.

"I think they caught everything, didn't they? Except maybe in the end when we dropped one," observed coach Joe Paterno, who happily noticed the difference as he conversed with The Associated Press. The Lions will need this kind of efficiency Saturday when they visit Boston College, which outslugged Penn State 27-17 in Happy Valley last fall.

Ask Reading, Pa., freshman quarterback Chad Henne, who shunned Penn State for Michigan, about his first official trek onto the Michigan Stadium turf ... as a freshman starter and he struggled to convey his feelings.

"There are no words to explain that feeling," he told The A.P. after leading No. 8 Michigan to an impressive 43-10 rout of Miami (Ohio), which faced a similar quarterback dilemma.

Gone from the Wolverines is much-appreciated John Navarro. Gone from the Redhawks is Ben Roethlisburger -- both good National Football League prospects.

Henne completed 14 of 24 passes for 142 yards, two touchdowns and one first-half interception. "For a true freshman, what I'm really impressed with is the way he handled the communication issues and what he did at the line of scrimmage," said U-M head coach Lloyd Carr to The A.P.

The freshman-sophomore matchup of Henne vs. Quinn at Notre Dame Saturday doesn't figure to be dull.

Ohio State's 27-6 victory over sometimes-feisty Cincinnati was pretty much routine. Justin Zwick, who sat behind Craig Krenzel for two years, finally gets his chance to guide the Buckeyes.

Not bad. He was 14-for-26, not overly impressive numbers, but the running of Lydell Ross helped spread out the U.C. defense and Ohio State's still-dominant defense did the rest.

It was a much-anticipated coach-vs-pupil matchup as O.S.U. coach Jim Tressel's defensive coordinator of three years, Marc Dantonio, had taken the Bearcats' job this past winter.

"How am I?" Tressel told the usual packed post-game conference. "Um, let's just say I'm happy it's over. It's a family thing and it's not easy going against family."

Other impressions: Twenty-second ranked Minnesota's eye-catching 63-21 rout of visiting Toledo, picked by some to win the Mid America Conference West Division...Rutgers' 19-14 upset of a Michigan State team that seemed out-of-sync all day...No. 16 Iowa's 39-7 victory over Kent State showed the Hawkeyes still have a diverse offense and will be a major test.