STATE COLLEGE, October 1–With another season of mediocrity potentially looming, the Nittany Lions could have believed all the media hype about Laurence Maroney being the premier rusher in football history. With this Turkey and other nattering nabobs of negativism in the sports media heavily discounting their 4-0 start, the Lions could have been appropriately cowed. With fans abandoning ship, leaving vast empty spaces in the upper reaches of Beaver Stadium, the Lions could have been discouraged.
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EVANSTON, IL, September 24 — Initiating their Big Ten schedule with a road game, the enigmatic Nittany Lions pulled out a come-from-behind victory, edging the Northwestern Wildcats 34-29. The Lions improved to 4-0, while the Wildcats sank to 2-2 before a small, yet enthusiastic home crowd at Ryan Stadium, snapping an eight game home winning streak for the ‘Cats.

For the first 51 minutes of the game, the larger cats looked like the Titanic running into that fateful iceberg. Against a team of lesser cats who had allowed 700+ yards by Arizona State the previous week, the Lions’ offense screwed up miserably. The first quarter looked more like a game of ping-pong than Division I-A college football—every time the Penn State offense got the ball, they gave it back.
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UNIVERSITY PARK, September 17. The mighty Penn State Nittany Lions burned the pathetic Central Michigan Chippewas 40-3, in a game that no doubt will give many beleaguered yet hopeful PSU fans a false sense of confidence as we move into the “serious” part of the schedule. Three wins over three cream puff non-conference opponents, all of which rank in the bottom half of Division I-A, only tells us that we’re good at scheduling. This turkey will not join the overenthused legions of hyperoptimistic fans who now predict a 10-1 season on the basis of this early success. I’m still sticking to my somewhat shaky 7-4 prediction, which was a hairbreadth away from being 6-5.
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