When Joe Paterno started coaching at Penn State, Northwestern head coach Randy Walker wasn’t even a glimmer in his parents’ eyes. In fact, he was a good five years away from being born.
“I’ve been coaching college football for 26 years, and that seems like an eternity,” Walker said, laughing at how his tenure compares with Paterno’s. “I hate to say it, but he was old when I started.”
Paterno’s half-century of coaching isn’t the only mind-boggling mark he’s bringing with him to Evanston on Saturday. His team comes to town with an 0-4 record, the first time it has slumped into mid-October without a win in its 115-year history. And Paterno is still sitting on one of the most anticipated records of the season, needing just one more victory to tie Alabama’s Paul “Bear” Bryant as the winningest coach in college football history.
Walker knows that it all comes together to make that awful intangible he can’t prepare his team for with extra passing reps or a new defense — emotion.
“I’m sure it’s significant,” he said. “I’m sure those kids love Penn State, but they love Joe Paterno. That’s why they’re there. I’m sure they’ll be ready to play.”
The feeling isn’t lost on Walker’s players, either, although quarterback Zak Kustok said Penn State’s emotion won’t necessarily affect NU’s performance.
“They’re one of the most tradition-rich college football programs in the country,” Kustok said. “They’ve got a lot of great athletes. But coach Paterno and his record doesn’t really have any effect on us. We’re just going out there trying to get ourselves better.”
The No. 22 Wildcats (4-1, 2-1 Big Ten) uttered similar words two weeks ago before heading into Ohio State. A 30-year losing streak didn’t intimidate them. The battle cry of the scarlet and gray didn’t mean anything to the guys in purple. They then went out and fell apart in front of 104,000 Buckeyes fans.
But if NU isn’t cowering at Penn State’s greater emotional stake in the game, it has to worry about suffering a letdown against a lowly opponent — the Nittany Lions are 0-3 in Big Ten play. The Cats have developed a pattern over the past two seasons of following up big games or close wins with subpar performances against sub-.500 teams.
“I don’t know that we have the right at this point to look at anybody and think anything about what they are,” Walker said, referring to his team’s own flaws this season.
The Cats take a struggling running game and a spotty defensive line into the matchup. The NU defense held Minnesota’s starting quarterback to just 36 yards in the air last week. But it also allowed tailback Tellis Redmon to roll up 143 yards.
Penn State’s leading rusher, Eric McCoo, should present an easier challenge than Redmon. The tailback has totaled 111 yards in four games this season. On the ground, the Nittany Lions have just 163 yards as a team.
Penn State quarterback Matt Senneca missed the Nittany Lions’ last game with a shoulder sprain. Redshirt freshman Zack Mills filled in for him, going 21-for-38 with 244 yards against Michigan. Paterno has not announced which of the two will play Saturday, although Mills has taken a back seat to Senneca when the junior is healthy.
For NU, the game also marks the first of three consecutive weekends that it will play a team coming off of a bye week — a scheduling rarity. The Cats forfeited their own bye week by starting the season the first week of September and then scheduling a midseason game against Bowling Green.
But Walker isn’t sure that means an advantage for either team.
“I’ve had mixed feelings about that my whole life,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t want a bye week and sometimes you can’t wait. I hope all of them are coming off of theirs flat and unemotional.”
It’s difficult to tell how all of the intangibles will play out, especially considering that the two teams haven’t met since 1998, before Walker was even coaching at NU.
