14 Penn State

The dream is vivid in his mind. "We begin with a win over Southern Miss, and my knee starts getting back to normal," says fullback Aaron Harris, tapping on a schedule with his right hand as he sits in a conference room in Penn State's athletic offices. "We knock off Bowling Green, then Pittsburgh. My knee's feeling stronger. Then, against Ohio State in Columbus, my knee's 100 percent and we upset the top-ranked team in the country. We give Minnesota some payback the next week, and we're on our way."

The vision doesn't end there. It goes on to include Big Ten and national titles, capped by players carrying coach Joe Paterno into the sunset on their shoulders. The dream doesn't show us, however, who will play quarterback or tailback this season, or how the Nittany Lions will replace six starters from a defense that last season couldn't stop the run, a fatal flaw in a between-the-tackles kind of conference. All of which leads to the problem with dreams: Sometimes they don't come true.

"We have a lot of holes on our team," says the 71-year-old Paterno, who is two wins shy of 300 career victories. "We may eventually play ourselves into being a great team, but we won't be one at the start."

If Penn State is to come close to greatness, it will need Harris, a junior, to rebound from the torn anterior cruciate ligament he suffered in his right knee last October against Minnesota. Before his injury, Harris—who did not practice this spring—was averaging 6.2 yards per carry. Paterno compares the injury to the one Blair Thomas suffered in 1987 and believes it will take Harris a full year to get back up to speed. "He's a key for us," Paterno says. "When he went down, it changed our season."

Until Harris is completely healthy, he will rotate at tailback with junior Cordell Mitchell and senior Chris Eberly, neither of whom will remind anyone of Curtis Enis (3,256 yards rushing, 38 touchdowns over three seasons). For now, that leaves red-shirt sophomore Mike Cerimele as the fullback, a late replacement for senior Anthony Cleary, who left the team in mid-August. At quarterback, the candidates are junior Kevin Thompson, a strong-armed, slow-footed, classic drop-back-style quarterback, and sophomore Rashard Casey, a run-pass threat in the Nebraska mold. So perplexed is Paterno by the dilemma that he hasn't dismissed the possibility of rotating the two.

On defense, an inability to stop the run ultimately undermined Penn State's season last year. The Nittany Lions ranked 81st in the nation in run defense but should improve in that area this year if for no other reason than junior defensive end Courtney Brown's having recovered from a dislocated left thumb; he played in a cast for the final nine games last season and still was named a second-team All-Big Ten player. Another jewel on defense is junior linebacker Brandon Short. Not only could Short become Penn State's first consensus All-America on defense since linebacker Shane Conlon in 1986, but he's also a leader on a team that otherwise lacks leadership. This summer, for example, it was Short who helped persuade about 30 players to show up at the school track every Friday at 5 a.m. to run laps in the predawn darkness. That's the kind of thing that can turn a mediocre team into a magical one.

"It's easier to start the season with low expectations," says Harris. "Last year we started Number 1, and everyone gunned for us. Now it's our turn to surprise."

In August, everyone can dream.

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