If the players weren't thinking about Michigan while Buffalo tacked on some garbage points in the fourth quarter, they definitely were as soon as the game ended.
Asked about 30 minutes after Saturday's 45-24 win if he had begun to think about the Wolverines, linebacker Sean Lee replied, "Yeah, right now," while simultaneously watching the Notre Dame-Michigan game on a television perched across the Beaver Stadium media room.
By now, you know the story of the Maize and Blue's brief season: horrendous loss to Appalachian State (doesn't matter if the defending FCS champs are a good team or not) and an almost equally head-scratching blowout defeat at home to Oregon (leading to calls for Lloyd Carr's immediate departure).
All that before, two days ago, the winningest program in college football history fended off its first 0-3 start since 1937 while confirming that the Fighting Irish are really as bad as they appeared to be through the first two games.
Chad Henne is hurt, listed as week-to-week, and likely won't play against the No. 10 Nittany Lions.
Mike Hart has been reduced to making not-so-confident sounding statements like, "I honestly think we're not going to lose," in reference to beating Notre Dame, which to the Wolverines' credit, they did soundly behind the size and power of freshman quarterback Ryan Mallett.
But none of the first three chapters of Michigan's season -- or Penn State's -- really matter. Why? Penn State has not defeated Michigan since 1996. Eight games, some results closer than others, some in Ann Arbor, some in State College.
Only a handful of current players have anything to do with the streak. But still, we're going on 11 years here. That's a pretty long time, and a pretty large-sized monkey on the Lions' back.
"You're going to hear it all week. That's just going to be the buzz around town. We haven't beaten them in 'X' amount of years or what not," quarterback Anthony Morelli said after the Buffalo game.
"We can't pay attention to that. I know it's hard to say that, it's hard to do that when everyone is talking about it on campus when you're walking to class."
Completely ignoring the ineptitude against the Wolverines, though, wouldn't be smart either. After all, this year's Penn State senior class has something to do with two of the losses.
In 2005 in Ann Arbor, the last-second derailment of what would otherwise have been an undefeated year. And last season in Beaver Stadium, a Michigan victory that was more dominant than the 17-10 final score indicated.
Those that were around, especially in '05, can vividly recall where they were during key points late in the game. Lee was on kickoff coverage when Wolverine return man Steve Breaston ran by him to set up Michigan's final scoring chance.
Wideout Deon Butler said he was standing on the Penn State bench next to Jordan Norwood and the injured Derrick Williams, when Michigan wideout Mario Manningham caught Henne's game-winning touchdown pass.
These are the memories that these players know, not past ones. Most were around 10 years old when the losing streak began. So when the Lions travel to Ann Arbor this time, they'll have a lot better chance of winning if they try to end a two-year streak instead of an 11-year one.
"We're just going to take the approach of this season," Butler said. "We have guys that are hungry to win and I don't think they're interested in hearing about the guys in the past. We just know now and what we can do to beat them."
Corey McLaughlin is a senior majoring in journalism and anthropology and is a Collegian football writer. His email address is cpm167@psu.edu.
