Bonded only by Blue and White, the team has come together in a peculiar and unexpected way, bolstered only by a shared desire to win and the will to do it.

Says Jimmy Kennedy: "This is what Penn State football is all about." Yet there is so much going on, so much happening that defies definition and perimeter.

This team is a unique construction, a seemingly perfect blend, the type that comes along rarely, even for a coach like Joe Paterno.

There is not a spectacular player among them. As a group, they are brilliant.

This team is made up of seniors who know what it means to be No. 1 in the country, and those who are too young to have felt that.

There are those who were there at the 1999 Miami game, and those who were not.

There are those who understand what it means to be Penn State, and there are those who, ultimately, did not truly have the opportunity to do that.

Until Saturday night and this: Penn State 40, Nebraska 7.

The win changed everything or at least was the announcement that something that was boiling had bubbled up and over and here it is.

This Penn State team did not come out of nowhere. After a 0-4 start last season, Paterno, the 75-yeard old wizard of this, said, simply, we are better than this.

In came Mills and the offense opened up and the team won five of their last seven, almost shocking Big Ten champ Illinois and showing their youth against Virginia. A few plays the other way, and the Lions could be on a nine-game winning streak. Alas, this group took some lumps, reached for the Bowl game and ultimately fell short, listened all summer to the lamenting of Penn State's lost glory, heard about their coach not having it anymore.

And through all this, a new Penn State team was born -- a team split in two that thrives on a dichotomy of leathered, resilient veterans and bright-eyed, run-and-gun underclassmen.

The seniors were there with Courtney Brown and LaVar Arrington. They were there when Sports Illustrated was picking them to win the national championship. They were there when tickets were selling for 100 bucks in the parking lot and the crowd was deafening.

The underclassmen know nothing of that, really. They were in high school or redshirt land when last the Lions were in the national spotlight. They got to Happy Valley and the team went 5-7, internally combusting. The next year, 5-6 was the best they could do. So the young kids knew only late-arriving crowds who had bought tickets for 20 bucks in the lot. They saw the students not painted in blue and white, but parting in the third quarter.

So, they were raised a different way. You can hear it in the way they talk.

Sophomore linebacker LaMar Stewart: "The intensity from the first snap was like nothing I've ever seen."

Senior defensive tackle Jimmy Kennedy: "I played with LaVar and Courtney. [Saturday night] was close to that."

It is almost as if the two sides have different outlooks on the same thing. Of course, how could they not?

Take the Johnson brothers. Larry, the tailback, is a hard-nosed, break-hell-loose type of runner who gets burned up by the talking heads on ESPN. He's always serious.

His brother Tony is the flashy wide receiver who'll thrill you with acrobatics and goofy antics in the media room. He's always having fun.

No one understands all this better than Kennedy. He could be playing on Sundays, driving a Lexus, owning a large home. But he came back, and for a simple reason.

"I think this win means a lot more to me because I came back for my fifth year," he said. "When I was making my decision, I looked at the people around me. I knew that these guys would play hard and that they cared. I've always said that as long as Penn State plays with heart, we could lose and I wouldn't care."

On Saturday, everything merged into one. Penn State, for two years a shell of its former self, came back to life and played with heart and suddenly there blossomed a new football team for the people to love.

Where Penn State lost its heart is a story best left for another day or probably, even better, never looked into. There are ups and downs in everything. Nebraska knows this now.

Instead, the fact that this team came back is the story.

"It's a different team," Kennedy said. "I've been trying to tell you guys that, and you aren't listening. Penn State is back."

Telling us did nothing, Jimmy. Showing us did.

Something new has been built. A tower with its foundation in leaders who want to leave the program the way it was when they arrived. Yet this architecture, designed by young virtuosos -- Zack Mills, Tony Johnson, Michael Robinson, LaMar Stewart and Derek Wake -- is entirely different than any before it.

Paterno stands as the foreman of it all and he has brought the elements together. The praise will come in heaps in the following weeks, and he will continue to ignore it, as he always has.

"You guys keep thinking that this thing tonight makes us something that we hope we are going to be," he said after the game.

No, Joe, we think that this is maybe the beginning of the next stage, the exciting part where we see what rises. Nobody is saying the Lions are even an elite team in the country again.

Everybody is saying they could be.

Finally, for the first time since 1999, that's what Penn State football is all about.