This place is different, no question about it.

Northwestern is one of the country's great universities, and it sits just north of one of the world's great cities.

If you can keep from blowing into the lake, it must be a great place to go to school.

In sports, though, it fits in the Big Ten almost as perfectly as, say, Ohio State would fit in the Ivy League.

OK, that characterization is a bit unfair to Northwestern sports. The Wildcats compete, and then some.

Evanston just doesn't seem fanatical about it. It was not electric here Saturday.

Even though the Wildcats came in fresh from a wild homecoming win over Indiana, in which it trailed 28-3 before coming back to win, 29-28.

That was Northwestern's fifth win, so it stood to become bowl eligible Saturday, and push over .500 in the conference. And Penn State was in town. JoePa, etc.

And a crowd generously announced at 30,546 (about a quarter of whom appeared to be Penn State fans) showed up and largely sat on their hands.

Sure, it was in the 40s and windy, but isn't that balmy for Chicagoland in late October?

Didn't feel like the Big Ten.

"I've never been here before, and I love away games," Penn State defensive tackle Jared Odrick said. "But this was a different setting. There weren't a lot of people here at the beginning. It took some getting used to."

Saturday's game appeared, from the Penn State standpoint, to be a classic "trap." Michigan last week, Ohio State next….

In the run-up to the game Penn State players and coaches, of course, denied that it was an issue, insisted they were totally focused on the here and now.

But this was Week Nine, to football season what the dog days of August are to baseball. It's a grind now. Sensing that, Joe Paterno gave his players Sunday and Monday off last week. Sunday's usual. Monday isn't.

You don't want to be tired, but you don't want to relax. Certainly, there was no conscious letdown. But they are kids. Human kids.

So here were the Lions, just stretching and getting their coffee, metaphorically speaking, and here comes Northwestern with exactly the right game plan and exactly the right offensive personnel and scheme to pull it off.

Northwestern doesn't get the Rivals.com top 100, but it does get smart, tough kids. Really smart.

Right now it has a fifth-year senior quarterback, Mike Kafka, who can run a Bill Walsh-esque passing game depending on quick decisions, timing and precision.

And when that passing game got Penn State nice and spread out, Kafka could run it up the middle of the field for tough yards.

This looked dicey for a while.

Penn State looked logy. It gave the 'Cats a first down because it had 12 men on the field. Running back Brandon Beachum used to be on the punt-return team, and forgot that he wasn't any more.

A few plays after that, the Lions had only 10 men on the field for a Northwestern field goal.

Penn State changed right tackles, Ako Poti to Nerraw McCormack, because, according to Paterno, "Poti was having trouble with his shoe, and we didn't want to waste a timeout."

Perhaps oddest of all, ultra-reliable wide receiver Graham Zug got his hands on a couple of passes, one that would have been a touchdown and another a big gainer, and didn't pull them in.

How lucky was Penn State that Kafka got hurt, and that one of his starting offensive linemen also went down, and that Northwestern fumbled three plays into the game, and…

You get the idea.

On the other hand, could Kafka have kept it going? At one point Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Bradley said Paterno came over to him and said, "Don't worry about it. He can't keep throwing like that all day."

Could Kafka have kept it going, in particular, once Penn State, led by Odrick, figured out how to get a pass rush?

Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald, assessing the play of Kafka backup Dan Persa, said that, "It looked to me like he was running for his life."

The Lions really did wake up. They scored three touchdowns in the space of about seven minutes. Their quarterback is really good, too.

Paterno seemed miffed in the run-up to this game that Daryll Clark doesn't get more attention. He was apparently annoyed at having to talk so much, in the week leading to the Michigan game, about its QB, Tate Forcier, a mere freshman.

"I don't want to get into that again," Paterno said Saturday. "Darryl is the leader of the offensive football team. He is a guy that makes us go."

They went, eventually. They got cleanly through to Ohio State week.

It wasn't as easy as it looked.