And as is the case with any team that comes into Happy Valley, Paterno has his fair share of worries concerning the Golden Eagles, who have beaten Alabama and Georgia and scared the pants off of Nebraska and Florida in recent years.
First there's Southern Mississippi's ninth-best nationally rated defense which is holding opponents to just 222.5 yards per game.
"They are a very, very difficult football team to plan against because they jump around all over the place," Paterno said. "They have good athletes. . .they probably play as well as anybody we are going to play against. They are very, very difficult to do anything against. I think the standings in the national situation would indicate that they are very difficult."
Whoa. Hang on there a second coach. Those national statistics are on paper only. If you take a look at a few other statistics, you may realize that perhaps the Eagles have a paper defense.
There's Exhibit A. Sure, when you look at the shear numbers, being the ninth-best defense in the nation statistically is impressive. But look at some of the teams ranked around of the Eagles in that same category.
There's No. 2 Louisville, third-rated UAB, No. 7 East Carolina and eleventh-rated East Carolina. If you haven't noticed a trend yet, pay attention here. All of those teams are members of Conference USA, meaning to this point in the season, they've played several common opponents.
Hence, either college football's toddler conference is flourishing with defensive masterminds or the league's offenses are pretty bad.
Exhibit B will show you it's the latter of the two. The Eagles two conference wins have come against UAB and Houston whose total offensives are ranked 105th and 58th nationally respectively. Their two non-conference victories are over Oklahoma State — ranked 103rd nationally — and Louisiana-Lafayette — which has the 91st rated offense in America.
Even in their two losses, the Eagles' defense faced two subpar offenses in Louisville (67th) and Memphis (98th).
Do you really think these numbers matter to Paterno? Forget it. His players aren't falling for it and no matter what the numbers say, they're prepared to play a solid defense.
"They are very unorthodox," Penn State quarterback Zack Mills said. "They're going to try to confuse you. They just move guys around everywhere. I just have to look at as much tape as possible and prepare for what they're going to do."
Ah, but if you'd listen to Paterno, Southern Miss has quite the offense too. But there's no way he could've gone by the numbers on this one. The Eagles are dead last in the country in rushing with an average of just 76.6 yards per game. Overall, coach Jeff Bower's bunch is ranked 96th nationally.
Paterno doesn't care.
"They are really spread out a lot," Paterno said. "My first impression after looking at them late last week was that they were one-back more than anything else, but then after looking at them against Louisville and Houston, they are a lot of two backs. I think they play some pretty good people."
But aside from the numbers, there's another intangible to this game that some people may have forgotten about. It's that these two teams are not that unfamiliar with each other.
The Eagles left Dixie for State College in 1998 only to get walloped by a then No. 2 Penn State team, 34-6.
And don't think the Eagles have forgotten.
"It was terrible game for us," Southern Miss tailback Dawayne Woods said. "We didn't come out prepared. We had a good team then, we just didn't come out and play."
It's games like these that caused a wise man to say: "That's why they play the games."
