You still have a shot of coming to the forefront as the leader of this Penn State football team. Even though your counterpart had a great day in Saturday's historic 29-27 win against Ohio State, the starting quarterback job is up in the air as your Nittany Lions prepare for Southern Mississippi.

"In all fairness to Senneca, after I had put Zack in I intended to put Matt back in," coach Joe Paterno said. "I intended to play the both of them and I told them on Wednesday or Thursday that I would play both of them.

"I think Matt deserves the opportunity to go out there and compete so I'm not going to make any decisions. After we practice these next couple of days, then I'll make up my mind later on."

But just because you're still in the running to lead the offense on Saturday doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels. Although Paterno may regret not allowing you back into the game last week, he still expects nothing but hard work and determination out of you.

"He was obviously disappointed (at our meeting) and I would've been disappointed to," Paterno said. "I told him to go out there Monday and go to work."

Understandably, many of the questions Paterno fielded at his weekly media teleconference dealt with Mills' splendid performance against the Buckeyes, which he received Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week honors for. And by the sounds of it, if it were up to anybody but Paterno and his staff, Mills would be the undisputed choice to be the Lions' signal caller the rest of the way.

But Paterno's the boss and sees his quarterbacks on the field everyday. Everyone else that isn't involved with the program doesn't make them unqualified to deem who the starter should be. And for Paterno, it doesn't even matter who's holding the reigns to the offense.

"It's not a big deal to us," Paterno said. "It's a big deal obviously to a lot of people but it isn't to this team or to this coaching staff."

Obviously, both players want to get the call and will bust their tails to get that spot. And as was the case since Mills got his first shot in the Miami game, both combatants won't let this situation come between them when they're off the field.

"Matt and I are both competitors and we both want to play," Mills said. "We want to do what's best for the team. I'm going to try to beat him out in practice and he's going to try to beat me. If he does better, than that's fine if it's good for the team.

"We're friends and like before, he said anything that happens is not going to effect our friendship."

While the quarterback situation is still up in the air for Saturday, one thing is for sure. Penn State's offense has shown a great deal of productivity over the past two weeks regardless of who was at the helm.

Because of Mills' stellar play since the Lions' game-winning drive against Northwestern, it's easy to forget that Senneca put forth a gutty effort to keep the Lions in contention against the Wildcats.

Still it's obvious that both quarterbacks have directly benefited from a few wrinkles that Paterno and his staff have thrown into the offense. First, Senneca played much better after the implementation of the Power I two weeks ago. And it appears as if Mills is a natural in running things out of the shotgun.

But as center Joe Iorio said, the plays the Lions are running are pretty much the same they've been running from their regular sets. These new formations are just a couple optical illusions that help to throw defenses off.

"The basic scheme of the offense is pretty much the same," Iorio said. "(The coaches) tried to put in new plays to accommodate different defenses, like from the Power I. Other than that, pretty much has been the same except for a few tweaks here and there."