It seemed for a second that Joe Paterno, the crafty wordsmith, had trapped himself. Here he was, sitting at his weekly teleconference and discussing his Nittany Lions' upcoming game against Indiana, and he began describing how the Hoosiers were a different group from last season.
That would be the team that lost to a 3-9 Lions squad 52-7 last year at Beaver Stadium.
But Paterno insisted that things might be different this time, partially because the game is being played in at Memorial Stadium in Bloomington.
"That is not an easy place to play," Paterno said.
Those of you waiting for a punchline are going to be disappointed. After the Lions had played at Camp Randall in Wisconsin and the Horseshoe in Ohio State, it's rather hard to justify Memorial Stadium as being a terribly hard place to play. But this is Joe Paterno, after all, and he came up with a reason.
"It is not the question of the noise and so forth, but where you stay is away from the place," he said. "We have to somehow generate some emotion about this game; otherwise, we will have troubles."
Hand it to the man -- that line made as much sense as anything.
Bloomington is a wholly unique venue in the Big Ten, in that nowhere else in the conference is there as much fan apathy as there is at Indiana, if attendance numbers are an indication.
Not every atmosphere in the Big Ten is fearsome, Minnesota plays in a dome off campus and Illinois has hit some hard times as of late, but Indiana is the definition of a basketball school.
Looking at some of the figures from this season only reinforces things. Memorial Stadium has a listed capacity of 52,180 and, despite some improvements on the field under coach Gerry DiNardo, the stadium hasn't even been close to being filled this season.
The season-high for attendance was 36,401, which came in the opener against Central Michigan. More than the 35,000 who saw the Hoosiers give Michigan a tough time, more than the 22,282 who showed up for the homecoming game upset against Minnesota.
Though the Hoosiers have one more win than the Lions at this point in the season, it's probably a safe bet that the crowd won't be out in full force after last week's 26-22 loss to another Big Ten bottom feeder, Illinois.
DiNardo, though, said that there's no way of telling how big the crowd will end up being, so the attendance doesn't affect his team.
"It looks like ticket sales are higher than they have been in the past," DiNardo said. "When your season ticket base is small, you have to wait until game time."
As for opposing players, well, maybe Paterno was on to something with the Indiana game being hard to get up for. So far this season, Penn State players have commented how they like being on the road and having the whole stadium against them.
Some players feed off of that emotion. But at Indiana, there's really not any kind of emotion at all from which to draw. Even the accommodations make players not look forward to the trip.
"The Indiana trip is always an interesting one," safety Paul Cronin said. "The hotel isn't that great. In between series, that's when you notice [the lack of fans]. It's going to be an interesting for us as a whole."
