Because last season went horribly awry for coach Joe Paterno and his Penn State Nittany Lions, this was supposed to be the year the 74-year-old eclipsed Paul "Bear" Bryant's record of 323 NCAA Division I-A victories.
Well, the Lions are now four games into their season and Paterno is still one win shy of tying the Bear's all-time mark. And while nobody, not even the biggest Penn State basher, could see the Lions ever going 0-11, it appears that this year's version could do just that.
But while the Lions have not given their coach that oh-so-elusive victory yet, they did accomplish two extremely difficult feats in their 20-0 loss to Michigan on Saturday.
However, these aren't the types of achievements a team hopes to attain.
The first is that the 2001 Nittany Lions are the first team in the history of Penn State football (a tradition that spans 115 years) to start a season 0-4, which means two things. One, this is the worst start ever for a Nittany Lion ball club, and second, this marks the first time Paterno has ever gone into mid-October without notching his first victory of the season.
Unbelievable.
Secondly, Michigan's unattractive shutout of the Lions was the first time a Paterno-led squad has been held scoreless at Beaver Stadium. The last time a Penn State opponent blanked the Lions in Happy Valley was in 1965 when Michigan State took Rip Engle's squad behind the woodshed for a 23-0 beating.
"I'm really disappointed," Paterno said. "We just can't make some plays and then we do the dumbest things — I keep sticking up for them because they're practicing hard.
"I'm disappointed for them because they really are working hard."
Unfortunately for Paterno and his players, it's going to take a lot more than hard work alone to get back to respectability. Nobody likes to watch a losing team.
That includes Penn State fans. Officially, Saturday's attendance was announced at 107,879. That is reflective of ticket sales only, not admissions taken at the gates at kickoff.
Anyone with just one functioning eye who attended Saturday's game could've looked around and realized that Beaver Stadium was not even close to being filled to capacity. It's actually a lot more likely that there were only 95,000 to 98,000 spectators on hand.
And that's for arguably the biggest home conference contest of the season.
They've been saying they were going to get back on track since the loss to Miami. But it's now come to the point where the Lions must start winning, not only to get back the respect they lost to the college football world, but to get the Blue and White followers back into the cozy confines of Beaver Stadium.
"It has to get turned around," defensive end Michael Haynes said. "You're not going to sit there and say, 'Hey things are just going to go downhill from here.'
"If you believe that you might as well not even be playing. We're all here to compete and win."
That's essentially the mindset of every player in the Penn State locker room. And as Haynes said, it has to be.
But the Lions' fans have been heard that all too often before. They are ready for results. And the season isn't getting much easier.
A week and a half from now, the Lions will head to suburban Chicago to tangle with a dangerous Northwestern squad that will surely rebound from the 38-20 thumping they took in Columbus last Saturday against Ohio State.
Seven days later, the Buckeyes will march into Happy Valley hoping to continue their trek to the Big Ten title. Then an always formidable Southern Mississippi squad comes up from Dixie to prove that Conference USA football is on the rise.
The Lions then finish at Illinois, at home with Indiana (a game that could've been viewed as a sure victory until the Hoosiers put up 63 at Wisconsin) and road contests with Michigan State and Virginia.
That's a tough slate. Students returning from points southeast of State College didn't even see that many potholes on Route 322 on their way back from fall break.
