He can now say it without cringing. He doesn't necessarily like it, but he accepts it.

"I'm just another back-up quarterback," Kerry Collins explains. "I play only if I'm needed."

Yes, the man who once was thought to be able to build Rome in a day is now relegated to fighting for his quarterback career. But Collins' fight is about patience. It is about waiting.

It is a fight that began for Collins when Coach Joe Paterno deemed John Sacca as the first string quarterback prior to the Minnesota game. Sacca went into the practices ahead of his counterpart simply because Collins had missed spring practice with an injury.

"That does not mean I don't have confidence in Collins," Paterno said. "We could start Collins on Saturday and be fine."

"It was the fairest thing," Collins said, "considering the circumstance."

It has been a difficult adjustment and a new experience for the West Lawn native. Especially considering this is the first time he has ever competed for a starting job and failed to clinch it.

For those first few days, he didn't want to speak with anyone. Didn't want to face being second best.

"I basically wanted to forget about football for a few days," he said. "But I'm better with it now."

After rummaging to decipher his role on the team, Collins now makes it a point to stay ready. Just in case. He says he is 100 percent healthy and is throwing the ball with authority at practice. But in games, well, he just watches.

It has been a cruel twist of fate for Collins, the quarterback once heralded to lead the Lions to a national title. The job was supposed to be his last season, heir to a team that was ripe for the ring. Instead the peculiar finger injury sidelined him for seven weeks. When he returned he was not exactly stellar.

"I think I got a bad rap last year," Collins says. "Before I played, I hadn't touched a football for three months. Then I inherited a team that wasn't exactly on top of it's game and had a lot of problems within the squad. Of course, I didn't play as well as I could have either."

Now he has to wait for a chance to ammend his season past and show how bright a rust-free Kerry Collins can shine. He is not bitter, but perhaps a bit sour at the treatment he received from the Penn State "faithful."

"I've learned a lot about people," Collins said wrly. "I was supposed to be the second coming around here, everbody was on my side. It just didn't work out. But when things went wrong, they were the ones pointing the finger."

The bandwagon halted for Collins, savior turned second string.

Sacca and Collins maintain a healthy working relationship, but off the field, "we're not best friends," Collins says, assuring competition has nothing to do with it. Last Saturday, Collins detected something in the USC defense. When Sacca returned to the sidelines after the series, Collins promplty shared his discovery.

"We're all in this together," Collins said.

But while Collins is learning to accept his role as a football back-up, the thought of returning to his other sport, baseball, rests in the back of his brain. Twice drafted, Collins was a superb pitcher with a 90 mile per hour fastball.

"I still think I have a career in baseball," said Collins, who still throws in the back yard now and again. "Righ now, though, I'm thinking about football."

But thoughts of being a backup while knowing he is of starting caliber is tough to digest. Even though, no regrets, says Kerry Collins.

"I don't know how, but everything it going to work out," Collins said. "Somehow."