Game of the Weak

Mike Hlas is an award-winning columnist with the Cedar Rapids Gazette and force behind The Hlog. Each week he will break down the biggest mismatch in college football. Considering the increasing number of Bowl Championship Series teams scheduling games against cupcake opponents, Mike's task is more challenging than serving as Lou Holtz's translator.

Why, Joe Paterno, why? Why do you keep scheduling Temple?

Is it to remind Philadelphia that your Penn State program is still the boss of college football in Pennsylvania?

Is it for the automatic win to pad your total for the most all-time major-college wins?

Or maybe you just enjoy beating up the little guy?

It's going to happen again Saturday in State College. Paterno is 25-0 against Temple, and Penn State is 33-0-1 in its last 34 games against the Owls. The last time Temple beat the Nittany Lions was in 1941.

They're meeting for the fourth consecutive year in the Game of the Weak. Chapter 4 is sure to be like the first three. The Nittanies outscored the Owls by a total of 123-3 in those outings. It was 45-3 last year, with Penn State outgaining its guests by 401 yards.

What a thing to do to a former player of yours, Joe. Al Golden, one of your tight ends from 1987 to 1991, is in his fourth year as Temple's coach.

Golden took over a program that went 0-12 in 2005. He has steered the Owls toward competence. They were 1-11 in 2006, then 4-8, and last year, 5-7.

After shedding the Big East affiliation that was too big a fit for them (six winless conference records in 14 years), the Owls have found a nice home in the Mid-American Conference. They joined the MAC in 2007, and have been 4-4 in both of their seasons in the league.

The Owls lost to Connecticut by three points and Navy by six last year, so this was a team not very far from bowl-eligibility. Their last postseason game was the 1979 Garden State Bowl. There has been only one other bowl, the 1934 Sugar.

But middle-of-the-pack MAC teams are raw meat for the Nittany Lions. Heck, this middle-of-the-pack MAC team isn't the best college team in Philadelphia.

Temple's Sept. 3 opener was a last-second 27-24 loss to Division I-AA power Villanova. It was Villanova's first win over Division I-A team since 2003 when it beat, uh, Temple.

Temple alum Bill Cosby wasn't smiling as he watched his team blow a 10-point fourth-quarter lead while he was in attendance that night.

Some consolation: No such lead will get away from the Owls in Happy Valley.