All of the omens were ominous.

National champion twirler PJ Maierhofer dropped the baton on the Blue Sapphire’s traditional spectacular opening double-walkover high toss. Drum Major Matt Sabo landed on his rear on his grand entrance front flip in front of the largest crowd watching a college football game Saturday and an ESPN national television audience.

On Penn State’s first play from scrimmage, mid-season All-America center A.Q. Shipley snapped the ball over the head of quarterback Daryll Clark in the shotgun position, and Clark had to run it down and fall on it for a 16-yard loss.

The spark plug of State’s potent 2008 offense, Clark fumbled twice in the first half ruining Penn State drives. Kevin Kelly, who had converted nine of 10 field goal attempts this season, launched his first one Saturday from 45 yards, and it bounced back off the right upright for no points.

It didn’t help that the Michigan offense, which could not muster enough points to defeat MAC also-ran Toledo last week, was carving up the Penn State defense like a Halloween pumpkin, gaining 204 yards to State’s 81 to take a 17-7 lead in the second minute of the second quarter. The confidence of the Wolverines, who had struggled through a 2-4 start in this year of transition to a new head coach and new offensive system, was growing as fast as the shadow of the press box was lengthening across the lush grass-playing surface.

And the Nittany Lions were not getting any breaks. Several reviewable calls went against them. In addition, when Michigan’s Sam McGuffie got hammered by Michael Mauti on a kickoff return late in the first quarter, his fumble squirted away from a Penn State player, before being recovered by McGuffie on his 22-yard line.

If Penn State had recovered, it would have been in excellent position to tie or go ahead and get the home crowd back into the game. Instead, the Lions had to struggle mightily until late in the third quarter, before taking their first lead and eventually registering their most lopsided victory ever over the Wolverines, 46-17, to finally get the Michigan monkey off the backs of Penn State fans.

For the 18- to 22-year-olds playing in Beaver Stadium, it may have been just another game in the tough Big Ten schedule—albeit a must-win if they wanted to continue their magical unbeaten season. But they could hardly be expected to understand the gravitas of the issue for the hundreds of thousands of Penn State alumni who had suffered the agonies of nine straight losses to Michigan since 1996—when today’s players were in elementary school. There was a millstone that needed to be released from around their collective neck.

And when that officially happened at 7:44 p.m. Saturday, the echo of the Victory Bell resounding throughout Happy Valley sounded sweeter than ever.

From the campers who opened Paternoville Monday night to the hundreds of alumni who helped dedicate the Alumni Walk at the Hintz Family Alumni Center Friday, from the nation’s largest Homecoming Parade to the soccer and volleyball victories to the White Out student section in Beaver Stadium dancing and singing to music of Celebration, it was a wonderful 89th Homecoming.

As two F-18C Hornet jets conducted a stirring flyover of the nation’s largest football stadium at 4:25 on a warm, sunny afternoon, the fourth-largest crowd in Beaver Stadium history began to salivate about its season-long anticipated victory over Big Ten nemesis—but 23-point underdog—Michigan and tried to ignore that gnawing feeling in the back of its mind about those first two omens.

Then came the Lions’ initial snap, followed quickly by the visitors’ unexpected 86-yard march to the south end zone on their first possession for a seven-point lead. A surprisingly efficient rushing attack sliced through the Big Ten’s top defense for 79 of those yards and only the second game-opening lead on the Nittany Lions this fall.

State’s sophomore tailback Evan Royster ignited the Lion offense with a 20-yard explosion on his first carry, but two plays later the usually reliable Clark fumbled the ball away after a 10-yard run. Wolverine tailback Brandon Minor outdid Royster with a 36-yard blast through the heart of the Lion defense, and a few minutes later K.C. Lopata kicked a 27-yard field goal for a 10-0 advantage. And the stunned blue-and-white crowd fell strangely silent, suddenly remembering all the previous times that Michigan had beaten the Lions when it shouldn’t have.

Royster quickly revived the crowd with a dazzling 44-yard touchdown run on his second carry, spinning off two tacklers at the line of scrimmage, powering through two attempted arm-tackles by linebackers, then outracing the secondary to pay dirt.

When freshman Mauti blasted the ball loose from McGuffie on the ensuing kickoff, it looked like Penn State could regain control, but a couple of diving Lions could not cover the fumble, and McGuffie got it back. Quarterback Steven Threet and Minor drove the Wolverines 78 yards to another touchdown and a pall descended over the crowd as the visitors extended their lead to 17-7.

Then came another omen, when Kelly’s 45-yard field goal attempt bounced back off the upright, and the crowd feared another deflating defeat by Michigan.

Not until the final minutes of the first half did the pall gradually begin to lift, as the Lions drove 74 yards in 1:38 to tally its fourth touchdown and seventh score in eight games on a two-minute drill. After a personal foul penalty on Michigan shortened Penn State’s field by 15 yards, Clark passed 17 yards to wideout Deon Butler and Royster carried twice for 24 yards. On a third-and-goal, Clark tossed a 3-yard laser to wide receiver Jordan Norwood for State’s second TD.

The visitors’ halftime lead was cut to 17-14, narrow enough that the old grads could enjoy the Homecoming halftime show. But they could not have expected that those would be the first of 39 unanswered points that would turn a 17-7 deficit into a 46-17 triumph—reminding long-time fans of the 1981 48-14 turnaround over No. 1 Pitt.

The home team, which had trailed its opponents for only seven minutes and eight seconds of its 420 minutes on the gridiron this fall, had already trailed nemesis Michigan for 21:51.

But as the Alumni Blue Band blared out its 46th halftime performance, a colorful autumn sunset glow settled over Bald Eagle Ridge and normalcy began to return to the Nittany Valley.

The Penn State defense asserted itself in the second half, and after Maurice Evans sacked Threet for a six-yard loss, the Lion offense once again showed the panache that had made it the top offense in the conference. The passing of Clark to Butler and Norwood and the running of Royster led to Kelly’s 42-yard field goal to tie the game at 17 and extend to 28 his consecutive contests with at least one field goal.

Then the defense got the score that gave the Lions their first lead when Evans pressured and Jared Odrick sacked Michigan’s second QB Nick Sheridan in the end zone for a safety. The play was nominated for this week’s Pontiac Game Changing Performance, and fans can vote for it until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday at http://www.pontiac.com/ncaa. If Odrick’s play wins, Penn State will get $5,000 for its general scholarship fund.

Michigan’s ensuing free kick went out-of-bounds and gave the Lions the ball at mid-field. Butler made a magnificent back-pedaling catch of a Clark pass along the left sideline for 25 yards, Royster ripped off a 21-yard run and Clark followed guard Stefan Wisniewski for the final yard and a 26-17 lead before the end of the third quarter.

On Michigan’s next three-and-out, Nate Stupar got a hand on Zoltan Mesko’s punt, which traveled only 12 yards to the MI-37. Royster’s 14-yard blast set up Kelly’s second three-pointer—a 32-yarder—on the first play of the fourth quarter.

Two plays later, Lion defensive end Aaron Maybin nailed Minor so hard two yards behind the line of scrimmage that he wound up doing a headstand and flip at the end of the tackle. On the very next play, Maybin, the nation’s sack leader, stripped the ball from Threet, as he threw him for a six-yard loss and the fumble was recovered by PSU’s Abe Koroma at the MI-20.

Clark converted a third-and-three by completing a pass to Norwood on a crossing route that the lanky senior took 15 yards to the MI-1. This time, Clark followed guard Rich Ohrnberger for his second one-yard TD of the night, extending Penn State’s lead to 19 points.

Kelly moved into third place on the Big Ten career field goal list with his 70th career three-pointer to cap State’s next possession with a 20-yarder.

The last score of the evening came from State’s second offense, when quarterback Pat Devlin completed a screen pass to backup tailback Stephfon Green on a third-and-10 call. Green sped past the entire Michigan defense and juked the final obstacle on his way to an 80-yard touchdown. It was State’s longest play from scrimmage since Larry Johnson’s 84-yard run against Illinois in 2002. Kelly’s fifth extra point gave him a total of 14 points for the night and the Big Ten kick-scoring record at 376.

Penn State’s perfect play in the red zone with three touchdowns and two field goals raised its nation-leading total to 41 scores in 44 trips (32 TDs and nine FGs).

Coach Joe Paterno has always said that a team has to be able to overcome adversity to be considered good, so the Lions passed that test—twice overcoming 10-point deficits to ultimately ring up its largest point total ever against Michigan, while shutting down the Wolverines with only 87 yards of offense over the final 43 minutes of play.

So the stage is set for next Saturday’s showdown in Columbus between No. 10 Ohio State and No. 3 Penn State to establish the front-runner for the Big Ten crown and the possible contender for the national title.

“If you’re a football player and you’ve been dreaming all your life about playing in games like that in front of 106,000 people, you’ve got to look forward to it,” Coach Paterno told the media after the Michigan win. “You can’t be nervous about it. You’ve got to go out there and have a little bit of fun.”

For the glory,