Penn State dodges stereotypes

LOS ANGELES – Stereotypes are like gum that gets stuck on the bottom of your shoe. They’re difficult and exasperating to scrape off. No matter how hard you try, it never seems as if all of the gunk is removed.

To many, today’s 95th Rose Bowl between No. 5 Southern California (11-1) and No. 6 Penn State (11-1) in Pasadena is a matchup easy to categorize because of national perceptions that, rightly or wrongly, have been formed in recent years.

The prevailing wisdom is that the Trojans have the racehorses, a team that blurs past opponents with speed, speed and more speed.

That same wisdom holds that the Nittany Lions are Clydesdales, a bunch of big, burly clompers who might be good at plowing fields, but lack the giddyup to run for long with the Pac-10 thoroughbreds.

Given the nature of today’s college football landscape – with its increasing emphasis on spread offenses and skill-position players who dash about as if their hair is on fire – the feeling is that the Big Ten Conference co-champions are simply too slow to keep pace with the Trojans.

Derrick Williams, Penn State’s senior wide receiver/kick returner who was recruited by nearly every big-time school, including USC, when he was a senior at Eleanor Roosevelt High in Maryland, is miffed by any suggestion that he has slowed down simply because he plays in a conference whose conservative mantra for decades was former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes’ “3 yards and a cloud of dust.”

“It’s definitely outdated,” Williams said of the Big Ten’s stodgy reputation. “When I was in high school, the SEC, the Big Ten, the Pac-10, the Big 12 and the ACC all wanted me. I had enough speed for all those conferences then, right? A.J. (Wallace), Stephfon (Green) had enough speed for them, too. Now, because we play for a Big Ten team, magically all of us got slower? I don’t think so.”

Perhaps, if it came to that, Williams and a few of his friends from Happy Valley could go a few furlongs as swiftly as the burners representing USC. But football is played by human beings, not horses, and it is a game in which speed is only a component of success, not always its end result.

Although each team is averaging more than 40 points a game, the level of defensive domination by both the Lions and the Trojans is such that traditional, old-fashioned Big Ten football – which is to say, trench warfare – might give Penn State, a 9 1/2 -point underdog, its best opportunity for an upset.

But coach Pete Carroll has never lost to a Big Ten team in his eight years at USC.