STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - No one thought it would be easy, the journey or any aspect of the emotional first step of it, but there was supposed to be enough energy and enthusiasm to carry the home team through and start a new era of Penn State football on a high note.
Instead, Saturday brought harsh reality. Penn State lost its season opener to Ohio University, 24-14, after leading 14-3 at halftime.
This is the start of a new era during which Penn State will lose a lot of football games.
New Penn State coach Bill O'Brien might be the right man for the job, and he's done and said a lot of the right things in helping his players and the university move forward in the wake of an unprecedented scandal and subsequent NCAA sanctions that forever changed the university and the football program. Right now, though, O'Brien has a job that not many envy. And further losses won't make it any easier.
This counts as an upset only because a Mid-American Conference school with no real football tradition beat a Big Ten school with plenty of it. The Bobcats are experienced and gritty, and they didn't let a horrendous first-half performance weigh them down. Penn State was sloppy, missed opportunities to extend its early lead and momentum and held no discernible edge in personnel.
To sum it up, Ohio running back Beau Blankenship -- all 5 feet 8 of him -- had grass stains on the front of his jersey, not on the back, after racking up 181 yards of offense.
"I think our (offensive) line took control as the game wore on," Ohio coach Frank Solich said. "We wore them down a little bit."
That's the MAC team beating up the Big Ten team, not the other way around.
It's going to be a long year for Penn State. And a long few years -- maybe a long decade.
The Nittany Lions will have 20 scholarships cut, to a limit of 65, from 2014 to 2017. They'll be able to sign no more than 15 recruits per year beginning next February and for the next three years. Eleven players of varying talent and experience levels left the program this summer after the NCAA sanctions said they could transfer without penalty and barred Penn State from postseason play for four years.
Running back Silas Redd and wide receiver Justin Brown were due to play Saturday night for USC and Oklahoma, respectively. Both of those players would have been Penn State's returning statistical leaders at their respective positions. Both could play big roles for their new teams. Their current team certainly missed them Saturday.
"We have to do better," O'Brien said. "We have to coach better. It starts with me."
The better quarterback played for the visiting team Saturday, too, and in the second half Ohio's Tyler Tettleton was both the luckiest and best player on the field.
Tettleton's first touchdown pass of the season came on what he called a "horrible throw," one thrown to where one of two Penn State players probably should have intercepted it in the middle of the field. It instead bounced into the air, into the hands of Landon Smith, and went in the books as a 43-yard touchdown.
O'Brien had to feel as sick then as he did a few minutes later when Penn State starting cornerback Stephon Morris was carted off with an apparent ankle injury. To O'Brien's credit, he's made no excuses and tried to remain positive. He's got a heck of a job ahead.
"Ohio is a very, very good football team," O'Brien said. "A veteran team coached by an excellent head coach. They beat us. They were the better team today."
Tettleton engineered a 14-play, 93-yard scoring drive the next time the Bobcats had the ball, making it 17-14 when he capped it with 1-yard run. He threw a pinpoint fade to Donte Foster in the corner of the end zone for the clincher with 2:55 left.
The announced crowd was 97,186, but it was pretty silent for the final 20 minutes. Penn State seemed to thrive early on emotion involved with a new start and the chance to move forward, but that wore off. The pregame ceremonies included a moment of silence for victims of the sex abuse scandal, and the Nittany Lions' entrance included 200 former lettermen and more than 600 Penn State athletes being on the field to greet the team.
A T-shirt seen on dozens of fans inside Beaver Stadium read, "Those Who Stayed May Not Be Champions, But They Will Forever Be Legends." Earlier this week, Penn State senior fullback Michael Zordich said the build-up to this game would include "the most emotional run out of the tunnel in college football history."
At the end, the Nittany Lions made the first of many long walks back to the locker room.
"We talked about the emotion of it," Solich said. "We knew we were going to have to take on a surge -- a surge that would come from the fans, from the players, the atmosphere. We knew it would be a difficult atmosphere to play in.
"I just wanted our guys to try to turn it into to just a football game, and we're pretty good at playing football."
Penn State threatened only once in the second half, getting stopped on downs at the Ohio 30. Nittany Lions quarterback Matt McGloin threw a pair of touchdown passes in the first half but struggled in the second, when he went 11-of-22 for 82 yards and an interception.
Over the last two years, McGloin has been a 54-percent passer, averaging 7 yards per attempt. He might be better this year, and O'Brien's system might be better for him, but he and his receivers couldn't make enough plays in the second half Saturday to sustain Penn State's hot start.
The new era started with O'Brien choosing to go for it on fourth-and-one -- and going with McGloin in a shotgun for that play. Penn State converted that, scored first late in the first quarter and went up 14-3 after blocking a punt deep in Ohio territory late in the first half.
By the final minutes, though, Blankenship was consistently getting into the second level of the defense, Tettleton found a way to throw for 324 yards and McGloin's body language offered the remaining fans little hope of a miracle comeback. Ohio got the bounces, the breaks and a win that gives its program some rare national spotlight.
The Ohio Bobcats are movin' on up the college football ranks. Penn State is in for some tough times, and that's going to take some getting used to.
