He arrived shortly after 11 a.m. dressed warmly in a big black jacket and a black wool hat. Michael Robinson was taking it easy on Friday.

"I'm chillin', man," he said. "I got some work to do."

He could've gone home for the weekend -- back to Richmond, Va., and his family -- but Robinson was in the office, putting on a brief exhibition of the kind of work he's talking about.

In the Lasch Football Building, each unit of the Penn State football team has its own meeting room equipped with different film study devices. The quarterbacks meeting room, where Robinson spends most of his time breaking down film with quarterbacks coach Jay Paterno, doesn't have a stationary computer. Paterno takes the laptop he uses for film study with him wherever he goes.

Today, Robinson has to use the running backs meeting room to explain how he uses the confusing, computerized study system his head coach doesn't really know how to use.

"He don't understand," Robinson said about coach Joe Paterno. "He don't understand any of this."

It's obvious that Robinson, the Nittany Lions quarterback, spends countless hours like this, either at his apartment with a DVD player and several DVDs of game film supplied to the Lions each week or, like he is now, in a dark room essentially alone.

"Usually the first time I watch film it's usually for entertainment," he said. "Then I'll watch all their games just to see what sticks out at me, and then the next time I watch, I just try to watch all the angles. Just like this."

Robinson quickly brought up film of Michigan State, Saturday's opponent, from the Spartans game against Purdue. He uses a bizarre-looking remote that glows in the dark to control what he sees.

Slumped down in a chair, Robinson gives the impression of a man watching his favorite team on Sunday afternoon in his favorite chair.

"Here they go. This situation right here. Third-and-one," he said. "I like to see what they do in short situations. They go two tight here. They walk the corner up. They got this other linebacker and the safety down."

He uses the remote's laser-pointing feature to point out what's going to happen and where.

A typical week of film study for Robinson unfolds like this. On Monday the Lions' units meet and discuss how they plan to attack the upcoming team.

Robinson, on his own, first looks at the defensive linemen and the linebackers to pick out what blitz tendencies they might show. Then he will study the pass coverage schemes for the secondary's tendencies. After that comes a "self-scout," where he looks at film of the Lions offense to figure out what plays he thinks will work against the defense he's been studying. Jay Paterno, Robinson and offensive coordinator Galen Hall will then get together to compile a script of the first 15 or 20 plays they want to run on Saturday.

"This year we've been able to do the whole script," Robinson said. "Last year after the first three or four plays we'd probably be in a third-and-20 and you have to go off script."

Robinson watched last year's game against Wisconsin to prepare for last week's game against the Badgers.

He noticed some interesting details.

"I've played so much football here in college now, I've really seen every blitz that I could probably get thrown, and I've seen pretty much every coverage that gets played after every blitz," he said. "[Wisconsin] ran a variation of [a zone blitz] where they brought a safety and a linebacker instead of two linebackers and what they did was play a cover-two behind it, which is interesting. A lot of teams don't do that, so that presents a whole mess of problems when you talk about switching protections to a play that is good against a cover-two defense."

"You got to see -- boom -- if I see these guys go, I have to go to my quick receiver now."

On the first play against the Badgers last year, Robinson, then a wide receiver, made a 22-yard reception on the first play of the game.

He had one step past the covering cornerback and admitted that he did not run a crisp route on the play, but that cornerback was back this year and Robinson knew how he could be beaten.

"He's awful in space," he said. "He can't judge the ball. He had perfect position, but he can't judge the ball. This year it was even worse because he's had [injury] problems and [Lions receiver] Deon [Butler] tore him up."

On the second play against the Badgers last year, then-quarterback Zack Mills was intercepted by the cornerback Robinson just beat. Why?

"We didn't pose any pass threat last year," Robinson said. "So they have, essentially, 11 men around the ball. You count the corners pressing our receivers -- they have no respect, and they're sending everybody. Usually teams don't blitz this early. This was the second play of the game and they sent the house. Zack's just caught. The receiver fell -- the ball wouldn't have been intercepted if he hadn't slipped -- now the guy who just got toasted has a little confidence now and didn't do anything spectacular. We look at that and plays like that killed us last year."

It sounds complicated, but Robinson manipulates the machine with ease.

He appears more relaxed in the pocket each week this year (maybe thanks to a winning record), but the effects of film study, which is important to all quarterbacks, cannot be overstated.

Joe Paterno wasn't keen on the new system of studying film, but the assistants have continued to innovate new ways to learn the Lions' immense playbook.

"This year we just came to a point where it's easier," Robinson said. "Our playbook this preseason, we were able to have actual color pictures on this thing and the coaches could draw on it so the players could actually see the plays, not in X's and O's style, but against real people. We had a video playbook, something that [the computerized system] allows us to do, and what happens is you have a picture of -- let's say this picture might come up -- with lines of what we have to do. Then the next thing you'll see is the actual play on the DVD."

Robinson's favorite targets this year are freshmen, which could have been a recipe for disaster, but the innovations helped.

"They only knew what we taught them in practice," Robinson said. "They knew nothing else."

He has Penn State's single-season record for total offense now. He has 10 rushing touchdowns and 15 passing touchdowns this season. He helped those freshmen along to ensure a future that could be much more comparable to Penn State's storied past -- a future much more comparable to this season than last season.

Whether Robinson, a senior, will be a quarterback prospect for the National Football League after this year is unknown; but, as he finished explaining his study habits Friday, Robinson knows what he will have to do to continue to be a successful quarterback in his last two collegiate football games. He has to keep studying. He has to keep working.

"I mean, that's pretty much my week of watching film," he said. "I just keep watching. Keep watching."