FanHouse Pat Devlin

NEWARK, Del. -- Even after an uneven performance that turned potentially disastrous late in the game, Pat Devlin still came within a fingertip of being the hero in his first home game for his new team.

The high-profile Penn State transfer, starting his second game at FCS Delaware Saturday, hit wide receiver Mark Schenauer on a 33-yard pass to the Richmond 9-yard line with just over two minutes left, setting up a potential game-winning field goal that would have upset the top-ranked defending national champions, just a week after Richmond had knocked off top-division Duke.

But four plays later, Richmond 's Kevin Grayson, also a starting wide receiver, blocked Jon Striefsky's 23-yarder with 38 seconds to go, preserving the Spiders' 11th straight win, 16-15, and further dampening the mood of the soaked crowd of 20,800 at Delaware Stadium.

The starting quarterback at Delaware this season has already been dubbed "the next Joe Flacco,'' and described as taking "the Joe Flacco route.'' Not even Pat Devlin himself believes he should be mentioned in the same breath, and neither do his college or high school coaches.

Even Flacco laughs at it, in his usual self-effacing way. "Ahhh,'' he began at the Ravens' facility this week, "I don't know if I really look at it that way.''

However, they all know the comparison can't be avoided, not at the very school where Flacco rose from the bench at a Bowl Championship Series-level program, to a starting gig in what still is called, out of habit, I-AA, and then to the NFL. Both landed at Delaware with not just their dreams of the pros, but of college stardom, on life support.

In the first installment of the end-of-season report card on the Big Ten, we looked at the schools in the first half of the alphabet. Know what letter is in the first half of the alphabet? That's right. F. But then, all the other grade letters are in the first half of the alphabet too.

Even though it wasn't a great year overall for the conference, there were plenty of bright points and hopeful signs and "wait until next year" moments which should have Big Ten fans excited for next season. Either that, or we'll all look like Charlie Brown did five seconds after Lucy teed up the football. But I digress. Let's take a look at the teams in the second drawer of the Big Ten file cabinet, shall we?

Pat Devlin never seemed that enthusiastic about Penn State in the first place -- he originally committed to Miami only to decommit when Larry Coker was fired -- and now he can be unenthusiastic somewhere else:

Multiple sources have told FightOnState.com that redshirt sophomore qurterback Pat Devlin has left the program and intends to transfer to another school.

As of this report, the destination was unclear, though sources indicate he is looking to transfer to the Football Championship Subdivision (DI-AA).

This is relevant: Devlin came off the bench and led a scoring drive in Penn State's win against Ohio State, and his departure leaves that guy with an extremely Italian last name (Paul Cianciolo) as the only other scholarship quarterback on the roster. If Clark gets knocked out of the Rose Bowl it could get ugly.

"Ugly" also seems a good word to describe how the transfer went down:

According to a source close to Paterno, Devlin, along with his parents, Mark and Connie, visited with the 81-year-old coach on Monday to express their displeasure over their son's situation. The Devlins brought with them a list of issues they had about Penn State's handling of their son.

By the end of the meeting, Pat Devlin had informed Paterno that he was leaving, the source said. With one game to play, however, Devlin's decision over whether he would play in the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl against Southern Cal was left dangling.

Yesterday, according to another source close to the team, Paterno asked Devlin if he had reached a verdict. The sophomore said he had not. Paterno made the decision for him, and by the end of the day, Devlin's locker was cleaned out.

GO AWAY FROM PENN SHHHHHTATE!

More worrisome for Penn State fans is the eligibility situation. Cianciolo is a senior, Clark a junior, and Penn State's recruiting class currently contains zero quarterbacks. Penn State is playing with fire here.

(HT: Black Shoe Diaries.)

If you were to judge Penn State quarterback Anthony Morelli solely by his numbers, you would think that the Nittany Lions have themselves a pretty good quarterback. His completion percentage could be higher than 59%, but the 757 yards, eight touchdowns, and only one interception looks pretty nice though.

As is often the case though, numbers don't tell the whole story. After Penn State lost to the Michigan Wolverines last weekend in Ann Arbor, the same questions surrounding Morelli last season came to the surface again.

Will he ever beat a good team?

Yes his numbers look good, but they came against teams like Buffalo and Notre Dame. Not exactly top flight competition. Against Michigan he completed less than half of his passes for 169 yards.

Since he became the starter last season, Morelli is 0-4 in games against Big Ten powers Michigan, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. He's yet to throw his first touchdown pass against any of them.

So the question becomes, if Morelli struggles on Saturday against the Illini in Champaign, will Joe Paterno pull him for Daryll Clark or Pat Devlin? I don't know if it means anything, but Morelli is usually made available to the local media in weekly conference calls.